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EVERY-DAY TOPICS 



EVERY-DAY TOPICS 



BOOK OF BRIEFS 



BY 



J. G. HOLLAND 



H 



FIRST SERIES 






£6PYRiGH"r. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

743 and 745 Broadway 

1882 



*> 



\4* 



Copyright by 
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO. 

1876 



Copyright by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1882 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 
201-213 E asi Twelfth Street 

NEW YORK 






PREFACE 



A GOOD many years ago, the author wrote 
and published a series of familiarly didactic 
books which won a wide reading, and which are 
still so kindly regarded by the public that they 
maintain for themselves a constant sale. Many 
of the articles published during the last five years 
under the general head of " Topics of the Time," 
in Scribner's Monthly, of which he is the edi- 
tor, have been recognized by the publishers of 
these books as cognate with them in subjects 
and mode of treatment, and they have invited 
him to select from the large accumulation those 
which seem adapted to the needs of every time, 
and prepare them for publication as a companion 
volume. This work he has undertaken carefully 
to do, and the result is the book herewith pre- 
sented. 

There is, of course, no opportunity in an edito- 
rial to treat any topic exhaustively ; but a group 



vi Preface. 

of brief papers, upon any general subject, may 
,be relied upon to present many of its more ob- 
vious and practically important phases. As these 
papers, however, were written without reference 
to each other, or to their collection and presen- 
tation in a volume, their division into groups has 
not been effected without some degree of arbi- 
trariness ; but it is believed that the direct or in- 
direct relations of the constituents of each group 
to its general topic will be readily recognized, 
and that the classification will be helpful in many 
Ways. , 

The principal difficulty which the Author has 
encountered has grown out of the attempt to 
avoid repetitions which, through forgetfulness 
and inadvertence, have found their way into ar- 
ticles so widely separated in the dates of their 
production. The most of these he has been able 
to suppress, but he has been compelled to retain 
some of them because of their important relations 
to the context. 

With this explanation, these papers, already 
familiar to many thousands of readers, are sub- 
mitted to the public, by its grateful friend, 

THE AUTHOR. 
June, 1876. 



CONTENTS 



CULTURE. 

PAGE 

The Faults of Culture i 

Sectarian Culture and What Comes of It, .4 

Popular Arts, 8 

The Art of Speaking and Writing, . 11 

LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN. 

Habits of Literary Labor, 16 

Literary Style 20 

Nature and Literature 24 

The Rewards of Literary Labor, 27 

Professional and Literary Incomes 31 

Literary Hinderances 35 

The Reading of Periodicals, .;.... 38 
The Morals of Journalism, . . ... . .42 

Lord Lytton, 45 

The Difficulty with Dickens 48 

CRITICISM. 

A Heresy of Art 53 

Criticism as a Fine Art, 57 

The Indecencies of Criticism 60 

Conscience and Courtesy in Criticism, . . . 67 



viii Contents. 

THE POPULAR LECTURE. 

PAGE 

Star-Lecturing, 7 2 

Triflers on the Platform .76 

PERSONAL DANGERS. 

Moths in the Candle, 80 

The Young in Great Cities 84 

The Good Fellow, 87 

Easy Lessons from Hard Lives, 89 

Prizes for Suicide 92 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. 

The American Gentleman of Leisure, . . .96 

The Improved American, 99 

Room at the Top, 103 

The Next Duty, 106 

PREACHERS AND PREACHING. 

The Power of the Affirmative, 109 

Modern Preaching, 111 

Fewer Sermons and More Service, .... 115 

The Dragon of the Pews 120 

Shepherds and Their Flocks 124 

The Relations of Clergymen to Women, . . .126 

CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Mr. Tyndall's Address, 131 

Science and Christianity, 135 

By Their Fruits 139 

Prayers and Pills, • 143 



Contents. ix 

REVIVALS AND REFORMS. 

PAGE 

Mr. Moody and His Work i 47 

CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 

The Average Prayer-Meeting 152 

Speaking Disrespectfully of the Equator, . . 156 

Christianity and Color, 159 

Sunday in Great Cities, 162 

American Sunday-Schools, 166 

Shakerism, 169 

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 

The Outlook 174 

A Time to Speak: A Time to Keep Silence, . . 178 

Why Not ? 182 

How Much has been Gained? 185 

Church Debts, 189 

Temporal and Spiritual, 192 

Organs 195 

The Free-Church Problem, 199 

THE COMMON MORALITIES. 

The Popular Capacity for Scandal 204 

Professional Morals, ........ 207 

Let Us be Virtuous 210 



WOMAN. 

Ownership in Women 

Three Pieces of the Woman Question, 

Women in the Colleges 

The Moral Power of Women, 
Provision for Wives and Children, 



214 
217 
221 
224 
228 



x Contents. 

WOMAN AND HOME. 

PAGE 

The New York Woman, 232 

Dressing the Girls, . . 235 

Home and its Queen, 238 

AMUSEMENTS. 

Theatres and Theatre-going, 241 

The Struggle for Wealth, 245 

Summer Play, 249 

Novel-Reading, 252 

Winter Amusements, 256 

A Word for Our Wanderers, 259 

THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 

The Liquor Interest, 265 

The Delusions of Drink, - . .269 

The Wine Question in Society, ... . . . 273 

The Temperance Question* and the Press, . . 277 

Rum and Railroads, 282 

Women and Wine 284 

Mitigating Circumstances, 287 

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. 

Good Manners, ......... 291 

Social Usages, . . . 294 

Social Taxes 297 

The Tortures of the Dinner-Table 300 

TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

The Loneliness of Farming Life in America, . . 303 
The Overcrowded Cities, 306 



Contents. xi 

THE RICH AND THE POOR. 

PAGE 

Employers and Employed 310 

The Neglect of the Rich, 314 

Strike, but Hear, 317 

Something that Wealth can do for Labor, . . 320 

POLITICS AND POLITICAL MEN. 

The Gentleman in Politics, 326 

The Bane of the Republic, 330 

Our President, 334 

AMERICAN LIFE AND MANNERS. 

The Old Types 337 

The Sins of American Good-nature, .... 340 

^Esthetics at a Premium 344 

The Conservative Resources of American Life, . 347 

Living with Windows Open 350 

American Incivility, 354 

Where are the Young Men ? 357 

The American Restaurant 360 

The Common Schools, 363 



EVERY-DAY TOPICS. 






CULTURE. 

The Faults of Culture. 

IS it heresy to say that no pursuit can be more selfish 
than that of culture for its own sake ? If there be 
forgiveness for such a sin, either in this world or the 
world to come, let us commit it, and so have the pleas- 
ure of uttering a very earnest conviction. Any compe- 
tent observer cannot fail to have noticed that the seek- 
ing of that which is most admirable in intellectual finish 
and furniture, simply for the sake of holding it in pos- 
session, has the same degrading effect upon the soul 
that comes to the miser from hoarding his gold. "The 
greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind" was a typical de- 
votee of selfish culture : and it is safe to declare that all 
men and women who pursue culture as an end, failing to 
devote it to any purpose involving self-surrender, are 
mean in their degree. So it often happens that as men 
grow more learned by study, and more skilled in intel- 
lectual practice, and more nicely adjusted and finished 
in their power, and more delicate and exact in their 
tastes, do they lose their sympathy with the world of 
Vol. I.— i 



2 Every-Day Topics. 

common life, and become fastidious, disdainful, and 
cold. They seem able to warm only toward those who 
praise them or who set an extravagant value upon their 
possessions, and to hold fellowship with none but those 
of kindred pursuits. 

It is often noticed, with surprise and regret, that as 
culture comes in, faith goes out. The fact seems strange 
to those who think that faith, if it is a rational thing in 
itself, should grow vigorous and far-reaching with the 
rising power and deepening delicacy of the mind. " Is 
it only the ignorant who have faith ? " they ask ; " and 
must man surrender this divinest of all possessions when 
culture enters ? " Ay, he must, if culture is pursued as 
an end in itself. Culture thoroughly Christianized — cul- 
ture pursued for ends of benevolence — strengthens faith ; 
but culture that ends in itself and its possessor is infidel 
in every tendency. The culture which is pursued for its 
own sake makes a god of self, and so turns away the soul 
from its relations — earthly and heavenly — that self be- 
comes the one great fact of the universe. A culture 
which does not serve God by direct purpose, and with 
loving and reverent devotion, is the purest type of prac- 
tical infidelity ; and there are notable individual in- 
stances, even in so young a civilization as ours, in which 
constantly ripening culture has been a constantly de- 
scending path into Paganism. We fear that any thought- 
ful American, undertaking to name those in his own 
country who have carried intellectual culture to the high- 
est point, would be obliged to indicate men and women 
to whom Christianity has no high meaning, and by whom 
it wins no victories. 

When culture is selfish, all its sympathies are clannish. 
There is nothing outside of its circle to be either admired 
or tolerated. Such culture can have no broad aims, ex- 
cept the selfish aim to be broadly recognized. Whatever 



Culture. 3 

work it does is done for the few. To contribute by kind 
and self-adaptive purpose to the wants of the many is 
what it never does. It is too proud to be useful. It 
would be glad to command or to lead, but it will not 
serve. It works away at its own refinement and aggran- 
dizement, but refuses to come down into the dusty ways 
of life, to point men upward and to help them bear 
their burdens. The world all might go to the dogs or 
the devil, for anything that selfish culture would do to 
prevent it. That work is done, and must always be 
done, by those who have faith — by the humble who have 
something better than culture, or the high who have 
placed their culture under the control of that law of love 
whose feet stand upon the earth, and whose hands grasp 
The Throne. 

The farmer, in recommending an animal to a pur- 
chaser, talks of flesh that is ''worked on," in contradis- 
tinction to that which is acquired while standing still and 
feeding. The one acquisition is recognized as possessing 
qualities of power and endurance which the other does 
not. It is precisely so with culture. That which is 
"worked on" — that which comes while its possessor is 
busy in ministry — is as beautiful as it is valuable. This, 
indeed, is the only culture that comes to a man as a le- 
gitimate, healthful, and valuable possession. The florist 
can show us flowers whose beauty has been won by cul- 
ture, but it has been won at the fatal cost of their fra- 
grance. There may be much in even a selfish culture to 
admire, but if there is nothing to inhale, our hearts are 
still hungry. We are obliged to go near to see that 
which should come to us on all the wings of the air. 

There is a sort of blind worship of culture among the 
people, which would not be worship were it not blind. If 
they could comprehend its narrowness of sympathy and 
its selfishness of purpose ; if they could see and measure 



4 Every -Day Topics. 

its greed for praise, and its contempt for them and their 
acquisitions and pursuits ; if they could feel its arrogance 
and pride, its charms would all disappear. If they could 
see how, in their earnest coveting of the best gifts, those 
who possess them had utterly forgotten the "more ex- 
cellent way," they would shrink from them in terror or in 
pity. It is sad to think that from the most notable 
school of personal culture in the country faith long since 
departed, with limping wings, while devotion to the work 
of making the world better went out with faith. Men 
who ministered at the altar have forsaken it ; and men 
who broke bread to the multitude refuse to taste it them- 
selves, even when it is presented to them in the name of 
Humanity's Highest and Divinity's Best. God save us 
all from the influence of such a culture as this, and help 
us to be grateful that it has seen its best or its worst 
days, and is dying at its root ! Christianity must kill it, 
or Christianity must die. It must kill Christianity, or it 
must die. The event is not doubtful. 

A culture that is in itself a mistake cannot by any pos- 
sibility become a bar of sound judgment on any subject. 
It is not safe to trust it in any question of religion, or 
morals, or society : much less in any question of art or 
literature. Its own productions the people have always 
declined to receive as useful to them in any degree, for 
they have no relation to their wants. 

Sectarian Culture and What Comes of It. 

It is not to be denied that that culture which accom- 
panies devotion to sectarian systems and ideas is not 
admirable. It is equally beyond dispute that the style 
of personal character which accompanies such culture 
is not lovable. The limit of sympathy is alike the limit 
of culture and of lovableness. It is a matter of surprise 



Culture. 5 

that men whose Christian honesty, purity, and self-de- 
votedness are conceded on every hand, are often men 
with whom we do not like to associate — men to whom 
we do not find ourselves attracted — men with whom we 
have little that is common. There are clergymen of 
great power and influence in their own denomination who 
are so entirely out of place in general society that they 
never appear in it. Their wholfi life runs in a sectarian 
rut, and tends toward, and ends at, a sectarian goal. 
There are great multitudes of laymen of the same sort, 
who have no associations outside of their own church. 
Hugging the thought that they monopolize the truth, 
they can regard no other sect with hearty toleration and 
respect. Their sympathies are shortened in every direc- 
tion, and their culture fails to be admirable, because it 
is based on one-sided views of truth and limited by the 
prescribed tenets of their faith. It is not an answer to 
this statement to say that true Christianity is never pop- 
ular, and that even its Founder was not popular. It was 
the narrow sects that hated Him. It was 1 the Scribes 
and Pharisees whom He denounced who despised Him. 
The common people heard Him gladly, and followed 
Him, and received His society and ministry by thou- 
sands. 

It is also not to be denied that there are styles of 
character and culture only indirectly formed by Chris- 
tian ideas, or influenced by them, that are extremely 
lovable. There are men and women who have had no 
conscious Christian experience, whose faith is either 
a negative or a most indefinite quantity, who make no 
public profession of piety, who do not even privately 
count themselves among Christians in name, yet who 
are nevertheless among the most amiable that we know. 
Their courtesy, their benevolence, their thorough integ- 
rity of character, their hearty good-will manifested in all 



6 Every-Day Topics. 

society, their toleration and charity, make them univer- 
sal favorites. They ignore all sects and all religious and 
political differences, and sometimes become social cen- 
tres for the Church itself. Many Christians prefer them 
for companions to those who are enrolled with them on 
church registers, and are puzzled to know why it is that 
they love them more than they do those who are nom- 
inally their brethren. 

The most lovable men and women we know are under 
the control of one of two motives, viz.: the sympathy of 
humanity, or the sympathy of Christianity. Both are 
alike universal in their bearing and reach, and both pro- 
duce the finest results on human character that are pos- 
sible to be achieved. Those who are under the control 
of the sympathy of humanity know no sect, and they 
only become unlovely when they single out some class 
of men as the recipients of their good-will and their 
good offices. The humanitarian who delivers himself 
to one idea, and concentrates his sympathies and his 
charities upon a single class, not only injures his own 
character, but his lovableness and popularity. Precisely 
as when one concentrates his sympathies and labors 
upon a sect, does he cease to draw the hearts of all men 
to him. No matter what faith we receive into our 
heads, our hearts will love the man who loves all men, 
whether he loves them as a man or a Christian ; and our 
hearts are right. The man who knows no limit to his 
human sympathy, and the Christian who knows no limit 
to his Christian sympathy, are those who hold the hearts 
of the world, and who, in that sympathy, possess the 
only solid basis for a broad and catholic culture. 

The Christian ought to be the better and the broader 
man. The Christian of genuinely catholic sympathies 
is the better and broader man ; but, alas ! a Christian 
of this type is exceedingly rare. The whole culture of 



Culture. 7 

the Christian Church is sectarian, and only here and 
there do men break through the walls that have been 
built around them, into that large liberty of sympathy 
and thought which is every Christian's birthright. We 
fail everywhere to recognize in our sympathies those 
vhom the Master recognizes ; for the Master's love is 
amply the love of humanity, based on a broader knowl- 
elge of its nature, its possibilities, and its destiny. The 
sympathy of humanity is wholly good so far as it goes, 
bit it falls short of Christianity in that it fails to recog- 
nize the immortal in the mortal. 

Ve are led to this exposition by the contemplation of 
a notorious fact in the literary history of the time. It is 
a subject of sorrow among the churches of the country 
that the higher literature of the day is very largely the 
prodict of men and women who have little Christian 
faith. or none at all. Did it ever occur to these churches, 
or tbt preachers who represent them, to ask why this is 
the cse ? Why is it that these men and women have 
the ciiture that makes their productions acceptable to 
the world ? Why is it that they, without any organized 
school to help them, or organized bodies to patronize 
them, produce that which is read by all schools and 
all bodes, and are the grudgingly acknowledged leaders 
in liteary art? There is some sufficient reason for 
this, ard it is not a reason that redounds to the credit 
of the :ype of Christianity which prevails. It is time 
to look this matter squarely and candidly in the face. 
These nen and women are not base usurpers of a 
sway w.ich by any fairly achieved right belongs to 
others. They rule because they have the power to rule. 
They pr vail because of excellence. The public are not 
deceivedby them, nor is their pre-eminence the result of 
accident Either their sympathy of humanity is better, 
as a basi of culture and an inspirer of thought, than the 



8 Every-Day Topics. 

sympathy of Christianity, or the sympathy of Christianity 
— pure and large and catholic — does not prevail among 
the churches. Something is wrong somewhere, and we 
can find that something nowhere but in the narrowing 
and dwarfing influence of sectarian culture. 

The sympathy of humanity was strong in Shakespeare, 
and it was given to him to weave at once his own crowr 
and that of the language in which he wrote. It wa^ 
strong in Dickens, and the whole Christian world turned 
away from its own fountains to drink at that which Ijs 
magic pen uncovered. It is strong in the hundred m<n 
and women whose brains and hands provide the bocks 
which the world is reading to-day. Is there no higler 
source of inspiration ? We believe there is, and tha/ it 
is that sympathy of Christianity which not only ignores 
but despises and hates all sectarian bonds and bouids. 
The Christian who does not embrace all mankind ii his 
Christian regard, with the largest toleration and good- 
will, and who does not refuse to become the slaveof a 
system and the creature of a creed, can never prodice a 
literature which the world will read. It has beenjtried 
in books, in magazines, in newspapers, and on theplat- 
form, and it has always failed. We must have a bjbader 
church before we get a better literature, and befc>e the 
present literary powers will be deposed from thei^sway. 

Popular Arts. 

There are certain arts in high repute among tje peo- 
ple which are so inefficiently taught, and so imperfectly 
acquired, as to call for some stimulating and sujgestive 
questioning. The amount of money expended ipon the 
teaching of music to the young in this country $ enor- 
mous ; and what are the results ? In every ladies-school, 
among our forty millions of people, the piano i\ sound- 



Culture. 9 

ing from morning until night. In all the cities and large 
towns, industrious gentlemen, each with a portfolio under 
his arm, go from house to house, giving instruction upon 
this popular instrument, and in forty-nine cases out of 
every fifty their pupils stop exactly where they leave 
them. In how many families in this great city of New 
York can a girl be found who is capable of going on 
with her practice alone, and perfecting herself in an art 
the rudiments and principles of which she has acquired ? 
Very few, we answer. We do not know of one. The 
universal testimony is, that the moment instruction 
ceases, progress ceases. Under the tuition of her 
teacher, the universal American girl learns her dozen 
pieces so as to play them fairly, and never goes beyond 
them. These she plays until they are worn out to her 
own ear and the ears of her friends ; gradually she loses 
her power to play these well, and then she drops the 
piano altogether, especially if she is married. The 
money paid for her accomplishment, and the precious 
time she has expended upon it, are a dead loss. 

The lessons in drawing, given in the same way, are, 
as a rule, as poor in results as those given in music. A 
set of pictures, of various degrees of badness, are manu- 
factured and framed, and that is the end of it, unless the 
bolstering and spurring of a teacher are called in to keep 
the pupil to her work ; but, beyond the eye of a teacher, 
the work rarely goes. The average American girl not 
only has no impulse to perfect herself in the ornamental 
arts to which she has devoted so much time, but she 
considers it a hardship to be required to take a single 
step without assistance. She is just as dependent on a 
teacher, when she ought to be able to stand and .walk 
alone, as she is when she begins with him. 

Now, we doubt whether this state of things is owing to 
something radically wrong in the girl. She has her re- 



10 Every -Day Topics. 

sponsibility in the matter, without question, but it seems 
to us that there must be something radically wrong in 
the teaching. A method of teaching which universally 
produces the result of dependence upon the teacher, 
stands self-condemned. What would be thought of a 
teacher of mathematics who, under fair conditions, could 
not teach his pupils to reason for themselves ? What 
of a teacher of the natural sciences who should uni- 
formly leave his pupils incapable of an independent in- 
vestigation in geology, or chemistry, or botany ? Yet 
here are two great classes of teachers who uniformly 
leave the young submitted to their tuition, not only 
practically helpless, but without the first impulse to go 
on without help. We know nothing of their business, 
but we know enough, from the results of it, to know that 
they are as ignorant as we are of certain very essential 
departments of it. We know, also, that if they cannot 
produce better results, the quicker they are out of the 
way the better. 

In the entire conglomerate educational system of 
America there is no department in which so much time 
and money are absolutely thrown away as in what are 
called the ornamental arts. The teachers in this de- 
partment fail entirely to comprehend the end toward 
which every lesson they give should drive. It is not for 
us to point out the remedies for their imperfections, but, 
in the name of a suffering and disappointed people, to 
call their attention to those imperfections, and to demand 
that they shall either be remedied, or the costly farce be 
withdrawn from the boards. 

Oratory is one of the most popular arts in America. 
The man who can speak well is always popular ; and 
the orator holds the hearts of the people in his hand. 
Yet, what multitudes of young man are poured out upon 
the country, year after year, to get their living by public 



Culture. 1 1 

speech, who cannot even read well ! When a minister 
goes before an audience, it is reasonable to ask, and to 
expect, that he shall be accomplished in the arts of ex- 
pression — that he shall be a good writer, and a good 
speaker. It makes little difference that he knows more 
than his audience — is better than his audience — has the 
true matter in him — if the art by which he conveys his 
thought is shabby. It ought not to be shabby, because 
it is not necessary that it should be. There are plenty 
of men who can train the voice. There are plenty of men 
who can so develop it, and so instruct in the arts of ora- 
tory, that no man needs to go into the pulpit unaccom- 
panied by the power to impress upon the people all of 
wisdom that he carries. The art of public speech has 
been shamefully neglected in all our higher training- 
schools. It has been held subordinate to everything 
else, when it is of prime importance. 

We believe that more attention is now paid to this 
matter than formerly. The colleges are training their 
students better, and there is no danger that too much 
attention will be devoted to it. The only danger is, 
that the great majority will learn too late that the art of 
oratory demands as much study and , practice as any 
other of the higher arts, and that without it they must 
flounder along through life practically shorn of half the 
power that is in them, and shut out from a large success. 

The Art of Speaking and Writing. 

A musician is not accounted an artist who, although 
thoroughly versed in the science of music, knows noth- 
ing practically of the art. It matters very little to the 
listening world how much he knows, if he can neither 
play nor sing. A man may talk or write very intelli- 
gently of picture and sculpture without the slightest 



12 Every-Day Topics. 

practical skill in either branch of performance. So there 
are multitudes of men with well-stored minds who live 
without access to the public, simply because they are 
not accomplished in the art of expression by pen and 
tongue. These men have been trained for public life. 
They have expected to obtain a livelihood by public ser- 
vice. All their education has been shaped to this end, 
yet they lack just that one thing which will enable them 
to do it. That mode of approach and expression which 
is essential to their acceptableness as writers and speak- 
ers is lacking; and so their lives are failures. 

The professorship of rhetoric and elocution has been 
regarded in most colleges as rather ornamental than use- 
ful ; and only here and there has its incumbent mani- 
fested the disposition and the power to magnify his office, 
and perform the great duty that is placed in his hands. 
Slovenly writers and awkward and unattractive speakers 
are turned out of our colleges every year, almost by 
thousands, whose failure in public life is assured from 
the first, because they have acquired no mastery of the 
arts of expression. Men of inferior knowledge and infe- 
rior mental culture surpass them in the strife for public 
favor and influence, by address and skill. They are dis- 
gusted with the public, and charge their failure upon the 
popular stupidity. " Our honest toil has been in vain," 
they say ; "for the people cannot appreciate what we are 
or what we have done. They like the shallow man best." 

This is not a just judgment. The brighter and stronger 
the man, the better the people like him, always pro- 
vided that he understands the arts of writing and speech. 
Mr. Beecher, Mr. Phillips, Mr. George W. Curtis, and 
Mr. Collyer are not shallow men, but they are accepted 
everywhere, and in all assemblies as the masters of ora- 
tory. Mr. Webster, Mr. Clay, and Mr. S. S. Prentiss, 
in the old days, were not shallow men, but they were 



Culture. 13 

orators, and their power over multitudes was the power of 
giants. Not one of these men would now be heard of as 
men of national reputation had they not won the mastery 
of expression. 

There is a quality in all good writing — writing thor- 
oughly adapted to its purpose — which we call "readable- 
ness." It is hard to define it, because in different pro- 
ductions it depends on different elements. Wit and 
humor impart this quality, if they are spontaneous and 
unobtrusive. Eminent lucidity, gracefulness of struc- 
ture, epigrammatic terseness and strength, downright 
moral earnestness, gracefulness and facility of illustra- 
tion, apposite anthithesis, forms of expression and uses 
of words that are characteristic of individual thought and 
feeling — each and all of these have their function in im- 
parting readableness to the productions of the pen. We 
find Carlyle readable through a quality which is Car- 
lyle's own — which he neither borrowed nor has the abil- 
ity to lend. Emerson and Lowell and Holmes are 
readable because of their individual flavor. There are 
ten thousand educated men in America who are fairly 
capable of comprehending these writers, yet who would 
render them all unreadable by undertaking to clothe 
their thoughts and fancies in their own forms of lan- 
guage. When this strong individual flavor is lacking — 
an element that belongs mainly to genius — art must be 
more thoroughly cultivated. No man of moderate ability 
and education can possibly make himself acceptable as a 
writer without a skill in the arts of expression which can 
be won alone through patient study and long practice. 

We have but few men in the country who designedly 
write for the few. We all seek to write for the million 
and to find the largest audience. Readableness, then, 
must depend very largely upon still another element, 
which is, perhaps, more important than all — direct, intel- 



14 Every -Day Topics. 

ligent ministry to the public need. People will not be in- 
terested in the discussion of subjects that have no prac- 
tical relation to their life. Any production, in order to 
be readable, must be based on a knowledge of the wants 
of the people and the age. What will amuse, instruct, 
enlighten, or morally and intellectually interest the peo- 
ple ? The writer who is not sufficiently in sympathy 
with the people and the age to answer this question in- 
telligently to himself, cannot be readable, except by ac- 
cident. The man who shuts himself up in his library, 
away from his kind, and refuses to make himself con- 
versant with their wants and with the questions that 
concern them, has no one to blame but himself if they 
refuse to read what he writes. 

The clergyman, conscious of Christian purpose and of 
thorough culture, and earnestly believing that he under- 
stands the message of his Master, finds with grief that 
he is not an accepted teacher. Let him learn, if it be 
not too late, that it is his mode of presenting truth that 
makes him impotent. Water tastes better from cut- 
glass than from pewter, and people will go where they 
are served from crystal. Salt is salt, but what if it have 
lost its savor? There are very few preachers who fail 
in knowledge of their message, but there are multitudes 
who know nothing of the people to whom they deliver it, 
or of the art of so proclaiming it that men will pause to 
hear and heed. The art of writing and speaking is both 
shamefully and fatally neglected. Without it, cultivated 
to its highest practicable point, the learning of the schools 
is comparatively useless. Without it, the preacher is 
utterly unprepared for his work ; for the grand, essential 
thing which will make his knowledge and culture practi- 
cally available is wanting. The man who cannot say 
well that which he has to say, may safely conclude that 
he has no call to the pulpit. 



Culture. 1 5 

There is no editor of a newspaper or a magazine who 
is not constantly returning manuscripts full of useful 
and good material, which he cannot publish because it 
is not readable. The style is turgid, or involved, or af- 
fected, or slovenly, or diffuse. If the style happens to 
be good, the subject is uninteresting, or it is treated for 
scholars, and lumbered with redundant learning. Of 
course the editor would not hurt the pride of the writers, 
and in his politeness he simply says that their produc- 
tions are not " available." They think the editor stupid, 
and he is content, so long as they do not accuse him of 
ill-nature. It is only when they charge him with the 
purpose of refusing all writing that is better than his own 
that he loses patience, and regrets that he had not been 
frank and definite in the statement of his reasons for de- 
clining their offerings. 



LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN. 

Habits of Literary Labor. 

When Mr. Pickwick informed Mr. Jingle that his friend 
Mr. Snodgrass had a strong poetic turn, Mr. Jingle re- 
sponded : 

" So have I — Epic poem — ten thousand lines — revolu- 
tion of July — composed it on the spot — Mars by day, 
Apollo by night — bang the field-piece — twang the lyre 
— fired a musket — fired with an idea — rushed into wine- 
shop — wrote it down — back again — whiz, bang — another 
idea — wine -shop again — pen and ink — back again — cut 
and slash — noble time, sir." 

There are other people besides Mr. Pickwick who ac- 
cept this method of literary production as quite natural 
and legitimate. We remember seeing, some years ago, 
a sketch by an extravagant humorist, of a man who 
wrote a book in a single night, tossing each sheet as it 
was finished over his left shoulder, pursuing his work 
with a pen that hissed with the heat of the terrible fric- 
tion, and fainting away into the arms of anxious friends 
when the task was finished. Preposterous as the fiction 
was, it hardly exaggerated an idea prevalent in many 
minds that literary production is a sort of miraculous 
birth, that is as strenuous and inevitable as the travail 
which brings a new being into life. Indeed, there are 
some, perhaps many, writers who practically entertain 



Literature and Literary Men. iy 

the same notion. They depend upon moods, and if the 
moods do not come, nothing comes. They go to their 
work without a will, and impotently wait for some angel 
to stir the pool ; and if the angel fails to appear, that 
settles the question for them. Such men, of course, ac- 
complish but little. Few of them ever do more than 
show what possibilities of achievement are within them. 
They disappoint themselves, disappoint their friends, 
and disappoint a waiting public that soon ceases to wait, 
and soon transfers its expectations to others. Literary 
life has very few satisfactions for them, and often ends 
in a resort to stimulating drinks or drugs in order to pro- 
duce artificially the mood which will not come of itself. 

There is a good deal of curiosity among literary men 
in regard to the habits of each other. Men who find 
their work hard, their health poor, and their production 
slow, are always curious concerning the habits of those 
who accomplish a great deal with apparent ease. Some 
men do all their writing in the morning. Some of them 
even rise before their households, and do half their day's 
work before breakfast. Others do not feel like going to 
work until after breakfast and after exercise in the open 
air. Some fancy that they can only work in the even- 
ing, and some of these must wait for their best hours 
until all but themselves are asleep. Some cannot use 
their brains at all immediately after exercise. Some 
smoke while writing, some write on the stimulus of cof- 
fee, and some on that of alcohol. Irregularity and 
strange whims are supposed to be characteristic of ge- 
nius. Indeed, it rather tells against the reputation of a 
man to be methodical in his habits of literary labor. 
Men of this stripe are supposed to be mechanical plod- 
ders, without wings, and without the necessity of an at- 
mosphere in which to spread them. 

We know of no better guide in the establishment of 



1 8 Every-Day Topics. 

habits of literary labor than common sense. After a 
good night's sleep and a refreshing breakfast, a man 
ought to be in his best condition for work, and he is. 
All literary men who accomplish much and maintain 
their health do their work in the morning, and do it 
every morning. It is the daily task, performed morning 
after morning, throughout the year— carefully, conscien- 
tiously, persistently — that tells in great results. But, in 
order to perform this task in this way, there must be 
regular habits of sleep, with which nothing shall be per- 
mitted to interfere. The man who eats late suppers, at- 
tends parties and clubs, or dines out every night, cannot 
work in the morning. Such a man has, in fact, no time 
to work in the whole round of the hours. Late and ir- 
regular habits at night are fatal to literary production as 
a rule. The exceptional cases are those which have fatal 
results upon life in a few years. 

One thing is certain : no great thing can be done in 
literary production without habit of some sort ; and we 
believe that all writers who maintain their health work 
in the morning. The night-work on our daily papers is 
killing work, and ought to be followed only a few years 
by any man. A man whose work is that of literary pro- 
duction ought always to go to his labor with a willing 
mind, and he can only do this by being accustomed to 
take it up at regular hours. We called upon a preacher 
the other day — one of the most eloquent and able men 
in the American pulpit. He was in his study, which was 
out of his house ; and his wife simply had to say that 
there was no way by which she could get at him, even 
if she should wish to see him herself. He was wise. He 
had his regular hours of labor, which no person was per- 
mitted to interrupt. In the afternoon he could be seen ; 
in the morning, never. A rule like this is absolutely 
necessary to every man who wishes to accomplish much. 



Literature and Literary Men. 19 

It is astonishing how much a man may accomplish with 
the habit of doing his utmost during three or four hours 
in the morning. He can do this every day, have his 
afternoons and evenings to himself, maintain the highest 
health, and live a life of generous length. 

The reason why some men never feel like work in the 
morning is, either that they have formed other habits, or 
that they have spent the evening improperly. They have 
only to go to their work every morning, and do the best 
they can for a dozen mornings in succession, to find that 
the disposition and power to work will come. It will 
cost a severe effort of the will, but it will pay. Then the 
satisfaction of the task performed will sweeten all the other 
hours. There is no darker or deadlier shadow than that 
cast upon a man by a deferred and waiting task. It haunts 
him, chases him, harries him, sprinkles bitterness in his 
every cup, plants thorns in his pillow, and renders him 
every hour more unfit for its performance. The difference 
between driving literary work and being driven by it is the 
difference between heaven and hell. It is the difference 
between working with a will and working against it. It is 
the difference between being a master and being a slave. 

Good habit is a relief, too, from all temptation to the 
use of stimulants. By it a man's brain may become just 
as reliable a producer as his hand, and the cheerfulness 
and healthfulness which it will bring to the mind will 
show themselves in all the issues of the mind. The 
writings of those contemporaneous geniuses, Scott and 
Byron, illustrate this point sufficiently. One is all robust 
health, the result of sound habit ; the other all fever and 
irregularity. What could Poe not have done with Mr. 
Longfellow's habit. No ; there is but one best way in 
which to do literary work, and that is the way in which 
any other work is done — after the period devoted to rest, 
and with the regularity of the sun. 



20 Every- Day Topics. 



Literary Style. 

We have Dr. Johnson's authority for the statement 
that " Whoever wishes to attain an English style, famil- 
iar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must 
give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." 
There is, undoubtedly, much to be gained by the writer 
through familiarity with pure models of style. The recog- 
nized classics of all languages, ancient and modern, as- 
sist in the direction and discipline of taste, for they yield 
instruction in certain common qualities, without which 
no style can be good, however strongly flavored by at- 
tractive individuality. Simplicity, directness, perspica- 
city and perspicuity form the basis of all good style, but 
a man may exhibit all these qualities in his literary per- 
formances without having any style at all. One can 
hardly be said to have a style who apprehends all things 
uncolored by imagination, and aims to record and inter- 
pret them with literal exactness. Dr. Johnson himself 
did what it would have been impossible for Noah Web- 
ster to do — he carried style into his dictionary. The man 
who could say : "I am not so lost in lexicography as to 
forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that 
things are the sons of heaven," was undoubtedly injured 
as a lexicographer by an imagination which made him the 
author of a style still recognized as " Johnsonian*" 

We do not hold an unquestioning faith in Dr. John- 
son's prescription. A style may be corrected, chastened, 
and modified in various ways by a familiarity with models, 
especially with models with which the writer finds him- 
self in sympathy ; but we do not believe that a good 
style was ever " attained" by conscious or unconscious 
imitation. Fish is good, but fishy is always bad. Noth- 
ing is more offensive than the coloring that a weak writer 



Literature and Literary Men, 21 

always receives from the last strong man he has read. 
Every possessor of a positive style, provided he be a 
valued writer, produces a school of imitators, who try to 
do their little things in the way in which he does his 
large ones, and make themselves ridiculous, of course. 
A worthy style must be the fitting expression of worthy 
thought. Chesterfield calls style " the dress of thoughts," 
but to have dressed Chesterfield's thoughts in Johnson's 
or Addison's style would have been the most absurd 
masquerading. The same may be said of almost any 
other man. Washington Irving might have received 
great good in his early life, by giving "his days, and 
nights to the volumes of Addison," because his was a 
cognate genius ; but Carlyle could no more have clothed 
his thoughts in the style of Addison than he could have 
fenced or boxed in a strait-jacket. Style that is not the 
outgrowth of a man's individuality, is, of course, without 
significance or value in the expression of his thoughts. 
It is never thoroughly formed until character is formed, 
and until the expression of thought has become habitual. 
No man of power can do himself a greater wrong than 
to make an attempt to acquire the style of another man, 
under the impression that that style will fit his thought. 
He might as well have his clothes made to his neighbor's 
measure. There is not one chance in a thousand of a 
fit, unless it be a fit of disappointment or disgust. The 
sensitiveness of language to the impulses and character- 
istics of the spirit that sits behind and utters it, is one 
of the marvels of the world. Its flexibility in shaping 
itself to every variety of thought and every form of imagi- 
nation, its power to transmit an atmosphere or an aroma 
which no analysis of word or expression betrays, and the 
ease with which it is made either puerile or majestic, in 
accordance with the spirit of its maker, show that style, 
unborn of the individual, is an utterly valueless attain- 



22 Every -Day Topics. 

ment. We can imagine no good to come from " attain- 
ing" a style by studying other men, except, perhaps, to 
cover up the literary coxcombry of such writers as Wil- 
lis, the rhythmical follies of such men as Poe, or the 
affected barbarisms of — Mr. Emerson knows who, be- 
cause he once did the world great mischief by praising 
him. 

All direct aims at the acquisition of a style, for the 
style's sake, are always, in some sense or another, fail- 
ures. We beg the lady's pardon for mentioning it, but 
Gail Hamilton's incisive, brusque, and forceful style — 
sometimes saucy, always clear, though often redundant, 
and strong beyond the average feminine quality — has 
done, without any premeditated guilt, a great deal of 
harm to the lower grade of literary women in America. 
The weaker woman, undertaking to speak through such 
a style, is simply and insipidly pert. She lacks the 
strong common sense and the height and breadth of im- 
agination of her model, and so appears as ridiculous as 
if she were to " assist " at a New York party in an old 
dress of Queen Elizabeth or the soldier clothes of Jeanne 
d'Arc. 

Some years ago Mr. Congdon was a writer on The 
New York Tribune. He reduced sarcasm, irony — we 
had almost said blackguardism — to a fine art. He 
could abuse a political opponent, or a social or literary 
pretender, by ingenuities of badinage so brilliant as to 
attract and delight every reader, and, at the same time, 
leave the object of his attacks hopelessly floundering in 
the public contempt. The efforts that have been made in 
the newspaper world from that day to this, by editorial 
writers and sensational correspondents, to repeat his per- 
formances, have been pitiful. No one has equalled him, 
and the attempt to fight with another man's weapons 
has drawn upon the clumsy thief of the old lance the 



Literature and Literary Men. 23 

punishment of public contempt which he sought to in- 
flict. Mr. Headley, in the hey-day of his literary career, 
had some sins to answer for, even if he were not a suf- 
ferer for the sins of others ; for it is almost impossible to 
believe that the writer of the exquisite " Letters from 
Italy " was also the author of the florid and forced pe- 
riods of " Napoleon and His Marshals." 

As a fair illustration of the absolute impossibility of 
one man writing in the style of another, take the two 
great poets of England now living, and let Browning and 
Tennyson undertake to acquire each the style of the 
other. It would absolutely ruin both. All writers who 
are good for anything have a style of their own. It can 
no more be transmitted or " attained " than the powers 
and qualities in which it had its birth ; and a man who is 
so strongly impressed, or magnetized, by the style of 
another, that he finds himself trying to work in his way, 
has his own weakness and lack of individuality demon- 
strated to him. It follows that most of the criticisms of 
style are equally without common sense and common 
justice — so far, at least, as they are made with the idea 
that there is such a thing as a standard of style. There 
is abundant wealth of literary style in the world which 
has no characteristic similarity to Addison's ; and the 
young writers who fancy that they must shape their style 
upon some approved or popular model, would do well to 
abandon the effort at once. A good style is always the 
natural offspring of a good literary mind. It is polished 
and chastened by self-criticism, and is a growth from the 
centre. A style thus formed is the only legitimate rep- 
resentative of a literary man. No lack of heart, or 
brains, or culture, or marked and large individuality, 
can be hidden by adopting another man's literary dress 
and presentment. If a man has no style of his own, he 
has no literary calling whatsoever. 



24 Every-Day Topics, 



Nature and Literature. 

If we were to look for a demonstration of the existence 
of a spiritual world, of which the things apprehended 
by our senses are the typical expression, we should find 
it in literature, and on that beautiful field of illustration 
where we so readily apprehend spiritual truth through 
the forms and relations of material objects. A preacher 
rises in his desk and tells us that there is no awkward or 
rough element which can be introduced into home life 
that may not become the occasion of new beauty and 
loveliness to that life ; and we wonder how it can be. 
Then he paints for us a pure rill gurgling from a rock, and 
picking its dainty way down the ravine into the grassy 
valley. Half way there thunders from the hill a huge 
boulder, that plants itself squarely in its path, tearing 
its banks, and throwing the mud in every direction. 
Quietly the rill makes a little detour, goes around the 
rock, nourishes vines that weave the uncouth intruder all 
over with verdure, and builds for itself a temple of beauty 
just there — a wayside shrine, at_ which all pilgrims pause 
for worship. At once we see the spiritual truth, and 
recognize its perfect analogies. The rill verifies the 
proposition, and we no more think of questioning its 
word than if it were spoken to us from heaven. It is 
this utter truthfulness of nature to the realm of thought 
that demonstrates its origin in thought, and proves itself 
to be an expression of thought in various forms and mo- 
tions of matter. 

It follows thatno one can be fully learned as a literary 
man who has not learned of nature. The strong men of 
the press, the pulpit, the platform, are those who are 
the most bountifully furnished with the natural analogies 
of their thoughts. The man who can illustrate best is the 



Literature and Literary Men. 25 

best teacher, as he is always the most attractive. The 
man who can make us see his thought — who can point 
out or paint to us its exact analogy in nature — is the suc- 
cessful man, in whatever department of intellectual or 
spiritual instruction. The more closely a man lives, in 
sympathy with nature — the more deeply he looks into it 
— the more fully he realizes the fact that it is only the 
language of the spiritual, placed before him to read, and 
put in his hands to use. He builds its rocks into his 
thoughts, he weaves its beauty into his imaginations, he 
clothes his fancies with its atmosphere. The rhythmic 
day and night become poetry, the setting sun a god with 
naming wings, the birds chanting choirs of cherubim. 
He sees straight through all into a world of which these 
things are fading shadows, or startling intimations, or 
perfect demonstrations. In short, he sees, hears, smells, 
tastes, feels thought, as it appears in a material form, 
among material conditions ; and with his thought thus 
apprehended, he has the power to represent it to those 
whom he is called upon to instruct. 

We are led into this strain of remark by the consider- 
ation that there are great numbers of young men, scat- 
tered up and down the country, in schools and colleges, 
who lament that they have not the advantages of a city 
life. They feel that in the city there are great opportu- 
nities of education, wonderful stimulus to labor, inspir- 
ing competitions, large libraries, social advantages, con- 
tact with high literary culture, eloquence to be had for 
the seeking, centralized knowledge and brotherly sym- 
pathy. Their country lives seem poor and barren in 
comparison. 

Well, what they think of the city is, in most respects, 
true ; but what they think of their country conditions is 
not true at all. No man is fit for the literary or the pro- 
ductively intellectual life of the city who has not had 
Vol. I.— 2 



26 Every -Day Topics, 

either a country training, or, for a considerable period 
of his life, direct and sympathetic association with na- 
ture. Blessed is the literary man, the public man, the 
man of the pulpit, who was bred among the fields, and 
woods, and brooks ; who has known the ocean in all its 
moods, and with whom the sky with its country blue and 
its silver stars and all its machinery and phenomena of 
summer and winter storms, has been an open and fa- 
vorite book. 

Suppose that Mr. Beecher had been confined to the 
city during all his young life. The result would have 
been that we should not have had Mr. Beecher at all. 
We should have had a strong, dramatic man, notable in 
many respects — but he would have been so shorn of his 
wonderful power of illustration, that his pulpit would 
have been but a common one. It is quite safe for us to 
say that he has learned more of that which has been of 
use to him, as a public teacher, from nature, than from 
his theological schools and books. He has recognized 
the word which God speaks to us in nature as truly di- 
vine — just as divine as that which he speaks in revela- 
tion. His quick apprehension of the analogies that exist 
between nature and the spiritual world has been the key 
by which he has opened the door into his wonderful suc- 
cess. A theologian who has mastered his science only, 
is as poorly armed for effective work as a child ; and all 
these young men, pining for the advantages of city life, 
ought to realize that they are living where alone they can 
fit themselves for the highest success. They cannot 
know too much of nature, learned directly from her own 
wide-open book. It is all illuminated with analogies 
which are not only corrective of their crudely formed 
ideas, but full of all fruitful suggestions touching their 
work. There is not a glimpse of a brook, a whisper of 
a leaf, a habit of an animal, a sweep of a storm's wing, 



Literature and Literary Men. 27 

a blush of a flower, an uprising of a morning, a sparkle 
of a sea, or a sob of a wave, that is not eloquent, or may 
not be made eloquent, in the exposition of intellectual 
and spiritual truth ; and he whose soul is fullest of these 
will have the most and best to say to the humanity that 
comes to him for instruction and inspiration. 

The Rewards of Literary Labor. 

Mr. Thackeray, in his notable letter to the editor of 
the London Evening Chronicle, written in 1850, con- 
cerning the dignity of literature, says that every Euro- 
pean state but his own, the English, rewards its men of 
letters ; and he even cites America as more considerate 
in this regard than Great Britain. " If Pitt Crawley," 
he says, " is disappointed at not getting a ribbon on re- 
tiring from his diplomatic post at Pumpernickel, if Gen- 
eral O'Dowd is pleased to be called Sir Hector O'Dowd, 
K.C.B., and his wife at being denominated My Lady 
O'Dowd, are literary men to be the only persons exempt 
from vanity, and is it to be sin in them to court honor? " 

Probably no Englishman who has lived in the last cen- 
tury cared less for titles, and the sort of honor that be- 
longs to them, than Thackeray. His plea was a general 
one for the literary craft. He simply intended to pro- 
test that if any literary man wanted the kind of reward 
or recognition of his work which a ribbon or a title would 
bestow, he had as good aright to it as anybody — a better 
right to it, indeed, than the average or usual recipient of 
it. And he was right, though he chose something better, 
as literary men usually do. 

In looking over the recent volume compiled and partly 
furnished by Mr. Stoddard, in the " Bric-a-Brac Series," 
we find much of suggestion on this great subject of re- 
wards for literary labor. Thackeray and Dickens, or 



28 Every -Day Topics. 

Dickens and Thackeray — as men may choose to order 
their coupling of the two great names — were what may 
be called well-rewarded men. They had many personal 
friends in all ranks of society. They were held in great 
honor and admiration by multitudes of men and women 
whom they did not know. They had princely pay for 
their labor, and were enabled by their power to earn 
money to give good homes to their wives and children. 
Yet neither of them, by the usages of English society, 
was socially among the highest class. They were petted 
and patronized personally, but they have left no higher 
social position for their children than they themselves 
originally held. Wider the circle may be, but its plane 
is not raised. These literary men, whose labor was one 
of the highest glories of the realm, who carried untold 
pleasures, and exquisite culture, and pure sentiment, and 
fructifying thought into every hamlet and house in the 
kingdom, were not the social equals of an earl, though 
that earl may have been — as many an earl undoubtedly 
has been — an ass. That they both saw the injustice of 
this, and despised the constitution of society that made 
such injustice possible, is not to be doubted — thorough 
Englishmen as both of them were ; and so thoroughly 
must they have seen the baselessness of the social dis- 
tinctions which placed them where they stood in the so- 
cial scale, that they could not but despise the titles and 
ribbons of which Mr. Thackeray spoke in his letter. The 
thought that the Queen of England can delight in having 
the works of her great novelists in her private apart- 
ments, and is shut away by social barriers from their 
genial, sparkling and fruitful society, and that those next 
below her must remain with those among whom they 
were born, may be a trial to them — it ought to be — 
but it ought not to disturb the men whose society is so 
foolishly sacrificed. 



Literature and Literary Men. 29 

After all, the matter is well enough as it is. In this 
country it is particularly so. In a free country like ours, 
where the social lines are not closely drawn, we do not see 
how a man can claim a right to any larger domain than 
he fairly conquers. The literary man who complains of 
lack of popular consideration and social reward for his 
labor, is, by rule, the man who has not comprehended the 
wants of his time, and has simply sought to serve him- 
self. To complain of lack of public reward for the ser- 
vice of one's self is certainly childish ; yet, the great mass 
of literary men in America who find fault with their win- 
nings is made up of these. Those who are not up to 
their time, though they mean well, fail of necessity. 
Those who are above or beyond their time fail, perhaps, 
in a certain way, but, after all, the world knows enough 
to know who they are, and accredits them often with 
more than belongs to them. Emerson has a world of 
honor from men who do not pretend to understand him. 

So we come back to the proposition that a man has no 
right to any more consideration for his literary labor 
than, in a fair, open field, he can conquer. 

Every literary man, by virtue of his constitution, owes 
a duty to his generation and his time ; and if, compre- 
hending that duty, he performs it well, he has no stint 
of honor. There is no man around whom gathers so 
much interest, admiration, affection, and respect as 
around him who charms, teaches, and inspires by his 
literary work. The young man who boasted that he once 
saw a railroad train passing, in one car of which sat 
Charles Dickens, and who felt exalted by the thought 
that though he had never looked upon his face, he had 
seen the car that held him, illustrates the enthusiastic 
affection in which eminent literary men are held. They 
are kings by right. Their kingdom may not be strictly 
of this world of titles, and dignities, and palaces, and 



30 Every-Day Topics. 

lands, but it is a veritable kingdom, which holds only- 
loyal subjects. The literary man who would not rather 
be Walter Scott than the Napoleon whom he described, 
or Thackeray than the Emperor William, or Charles 
Dickens than the Prince of Wales, or Mrs. Browning 
than the Queen of England, or Washington Irving than 
Gen. Jackson, or William Cullen Bryant than General 
Grant, is a disgrace to his craft, undeserving of any lit- 
erary reward, and incapable of winning one. 

This admitted, it is idle to talk of the inadequacy of 
literary rewards, so far as the social and personal honors 
of the world are concerned. They are abundant, and 
above all titular honors, all wealth, all official position. 
Mr. Everett is remembered to-day, not as our minister 
to England, but as an orator. Mr. Bancroft retires 
honorably from his Prussian mission; but Mr. Bancroft, 
the historian, has conferred more honor upon his office 
than the office has conferred upon him. The principal 
distinction that has ever come to the Liverpool consulate 
has come through Mr. Hawthorne's occupation of it. 
Names like those of Franklin, Adams, and Motley are 
those almost alone which have saved the bureaus of our 
diplomatic foreign service from absolute contempt. A 
hundred ordinary politicians come, go, and are for- 
gotten ; but glory lingers around the chairs once occu- 
pied by men whom office could not honor. 

The great lack of reward to literary labor is in the 
matter of money. Not one author in twenty can live on 
his authorial earnings. We speak of this country of 
cheap books. We have altogether too many men who 
are still drudging for the bread that feeds themselves and 
their families, though they have done good, marketable 
literary work all their lives. Copyright is contemptibly 
small. We do not mean that publishers make too much, 
but that the books are sold so cheap that neither publish- 



Literature and Literary Men. 31 

ers nor authors can get a fair living The consumers of 
books must remember that out of every dollar they pay for 
a copyrighted book, the writer gets but ten cents, and the 
publishers would be quite willing, as a rule, to share 
the losses and gains of publication with the authors. If 
copyright were double what it is, authors could not get 
a living exclusively by authorship. That this is all 
wrong, is undoubted. That it ever will be right until 
we have an international copyright law, which will do 
away with the competition of American authors with 
stolen books, we do not believe. When this wrong is 
righted, authors will have nothing left to complain of. 

Professional and Literary Incomes. 

The clergyman, the lawyer, the physician, the editor, 
the teacher, and the writer of books, in order to excel- 
lence in their respective professions, are all obliged to 
go through the same amount of preliminary study. It 
costs as much of time, money, and labor to thoroughly 
fit one for his work as the other ; and we may add that 
it requires just as much talent and genius to be a 
teacher as to be an author, to be an editor as to be a 
clergyman or a lawyer. The special adaptation of 
natural gifts and dispositions is just as important and 
valuable to the community in one profession as in an- 
other. Each requires a whole man, who shall be a man 
outside of his special work — a man of culture, large 
acquaintance with men and things, a well-furnished and 
cleanly working intellect, a high character, and superla- 
tive devotion to the work from which he wins his living. 
In the nature of things, in the character of the work 
done, and in the amount and kind of preparation re- 
quired, there is no reason why one should be better paid 
than the other ; yet there is no field of human effort 



32 Every -Day Topics. 

which presents a wider variety or contrariety of pecuniary 
rewards than that presented by professional and literary 
labor. 

There are two forms of income attached to this 
variety of work, viz.: that which arises from salaries, 
and that which arises from fees. The former is fixed by 
the community for which the work is done, and the latter 
by those who do the work. The salaried man enters 
the market and sells his services at the highest rate 
which they will command in competition with others. 
The man of fees combines with his brethren to fix a 
compensation for his services, which compels the com- 
munity to take them at his valuation or to do without 
them. To say that the lawyer and the physician have the 
advantage of all the other professions, is simply to repeat 
a notorious fact. The lawyer and the physician who are 
thoroughly prepared for and fitted to their work can, and 
do, get rich. The clergyman, the teacher, the editor, 
and the author cannot, and do not, get rich by their 
work. The brightest author in America, though he pro- 
duce books of universal acceptation, can never get rich ; 
and hardly one author in one hundred can realize enough 
from his labor, at the present rates of copyright, to rear 
a family in comfort. The teacher gets just enough to 
live on, and no more, while the clergyman and the hired 
editor, save in rare instances, are men who are obliged 
to practise the most rigid economy in order to live with- 
in their income. 

We are not among those who believe that the salaried 
man gets enough for his work. We should be glad to 
see him better paid in all departments of his labor. It 
so happens that he works at the very foundations of 
society, and has his office of ministry all through its 
superstructure. He has to do with the morality, the 
education, the information, the opinion, and the culture 



Literature and Literary Men. 33 

of the social mass. Take away his work, and society 
would degenerate into barbarism. The importance of 
his work cannot be calculated. He is the inspirer, in- 
structor, and conservator of our civilization ; and he is 
as powerless to-day to win a competence for his old age, 
while all around him are getting rich and receiving the 
results of his labor, as if he were a child. The super- 
annuated clergyman ekes out his life in the humblest 
way ; the exhausted teacher peddles books or drifts into 
some petty clerkship ; the editor breaks down or becomes 
a hack ; and the author writes himself out, or runs into 
drivel that wins the scantiest pay and destroys whatever 
reputation he may have won when his powers were at 
their best productive activity. There may be exceptions 
to this rule ; but that this is the rule is beyond dispute. 

The men of fees are the physician and the lawyer. 
One has to do with the physical diseases of men,' and 
the other with their legal quarrels and their crimes. We 
do not, in the slightest degree, disparage the usefulness 
of these two classes of professional men ; we simply say 
that the better the other classes perform their work, the 
less these have to do. They live upon the moral and 
physical evils of the country ; and there is no reason in 
the nature of their calling for their advantage in pecu- 
niary rewards over the other classes. There is no rea- 
son why a general practitioner of medicine, or a special- 
ist in medicine or surgery, should sit in his office, and 
take in a single fee, for a service that costs him fifteen 
minutes of time, a sum equal to that which a teacher or 
a clergyman works all day to win. There is no reason 
why a physician, called into a house in consultation, 
should charge for his service a sum that it takes an edi- 
tor two days of hard work to earn. There is no good 
reason for the setting of a price upon a surgical opera- 
tion, performed in half an hour, that the most success- 
2* 



34 Every- Day Topics. 

ful author's copyright cannot pay in a month. It is 
simple, inexcusable, and outrageous extortion. If we go 
from the physician to the lawyer, we find still higher 
fees. The simplest work, such as searching titles, work 
that only demands accuracy, and is usually done by clerks, 
commands a price that few men can afford to pay, while 
larger work involves fees that are startling and stupen- 
dous. Some of the incomes of lawyers in this city are 
large enough to swallow up the salaries of a dozen, or 
twice that number, of salaried professional men. The 
way in which people are bled in the process of securing 
justice is often most shameful. So shameful is it, that 
thousands submit to wrong rather than go into any liti- 
gation whatever. People dread getting into a lawyer's 
hands as they dread getting into the hands of a New 
York hackman. There are honorable and reasonable 
lawyers, without doubt, men in whose honor we may im- 
plicitly trust ; but there are so many extortioners among 
them that they have given a bad flavor to the profession. 
There are shysters and scamps enough in New York, at- 
tached to the profession, to sink it, were it not that there 
are noble men in it who are unpurchasable. But law- 
yers' fees are notoriously large as a rule, and altogether 
outweigh the salaries of the salaried professional men. 

Perhaps the fees the community is obliged to pay is a 
fitting punishment for the wrong it inflicts upon its sala- 
ried professional servants. There ought to be some 
remedy for both evils. Where it is to be found, we do 
not know. The physician has some apology for getting 
high fees of those who can pay, because he is obliged to 
do so much for the poor who cannot pay ; but the law- 
yer, as a rule, does not undertake a case which promises 
him no remuneration. He "goes in" for money; and 
there ought to be some law which will enable the poor 
man to get justice without financial ruin. There is at 



Literature and Literary Men. 35 

least no good reason why one set of professional men 
should half starve while another gorges itself upon fees 
that bring wealth and luxury. That fees are too large 
and salaries too small has become a popular conviction, 
which can only be removed by a reform in both direc- 
tions, that shall bring. literary and professional men 
equivalent rewards. 

Literary Hinderances. 

There was something very impressive and suggestive 
in what Mr. Stedman once printed on the embarrassments 
of Hood's literary life. The brave, cheerful, mirth-pro- 
voking man, spreading innocent pleasure all over a realm 
from his bed of pain, coining his wasting blood into 
pence with which to buy bread for himself and his fam- 
ily, presents to the imagination an object at once pitiful 
and inspiring. Yet the literary world is full of spectacles 
only less touching. Three-quarters of the literary men 
and women of the present time are loaded down with 
cares that seem to forbid the free development of their 
genius, and deny to them the power to do their best possi- 
ble work. The painter, with the greatest ambition and 
the noblest genius, is obliged to come down to what he 
calls his " pot-boilers ; " and most literary men and wo- 
men do the same. They do work in which they take no 
pleasure, simply because it is necessary to win them 
bread and clothing. Even this work they do under a 
pressure that is sometimes degrading, and some of them 
are obliged to do so much of it that, after a time, the 
spontaneous, creative impulse dies out of them, and 
they become disheartened and demoralized literary 
hacks. 

But suppose the case were as we would like to have it. 
Suppose that when genius should be discovered in any 



36 Every -Day Topics. 

man, or woman, a competent pension were provided at 
once for his or her maintenance, so that all common 
cares could be forever set aside, and the song be sung 
and the story be told in perfect freedom and at perfect 
leisure. Suppose every writer could have Byron's wealth, 
or Tennyson's competence, or Dickens' literary income, 
would it be better for the world thus, or even better for 
literature ? It is an open question, which it would be 
well for all repiners to examine. Would Byron have 
been a better or a worse writer with poverty ? Would 
not Tennyson have had more for the great world of 
struggling and sorrowing life with smaller possibilities 
of self-seclusion? Were not Dickens' wide-mouthed 
wants, natural and artificial, among the productive mo- 
tives which have given to the world the most remarkable 
series of novels that the English language holds among 
its treasures ? 

If the truth must be confessed, the literary men and 
women of the world can hardly be trusted with wealth, 
when we remember that literature has no uses save as it 
ministers to the comfort, the pure pleasure, the strength, 
the elevation, and the spiritual culture of the race. To 
be placed beyond the common needs and the common 
struggles of men, is to be placed beyond their sympathies, 
is to be placed outside of a realm of knowledge which all 
must possess whose function is that of artistic ministry. 

That the operation of this law brings individual hard- 
ship may not be questioned, but we cannot afford to 
lose it because of this. Tennyson could never have 
sung "The Song of the Shirt," or " The Bridge of 
Sighs." It took a man to do those things who had lived 
close to London life, and who, in his own person and 
fortunes, had shared in the trials and tragedies of its 
struggling multitudes. Cowper is dearest to those whose 
lives have been clouded, and sings to them by a divine 



Literature and Literary Men. 37 

commission. We should have lost our Burns if he had 
been born in a palace, and reared in luxury. Mrs. 
Browning, like the lark, would have sung all her songs 
in the sky, beyond the hearing of the common ear, if 
she had not been bound to the earth by the chain of 
pain. Even Shakespeare, in his most wonderful plays, 
" meant business." How true, and sweet, and pure re- 
mains the spirit that still shines under the Quaker brown, 
and waits for translation within the consecrated cottage 
of Amesbury ! God made Whittier poor, that every son 
of want, and every victim of wrong should have a sym- 
pathizing and ministering brother. Uncounted and in- 
estimable literary successes have been founded upon a 
knowledge of, and sympathy with, the world, only won 
and only attainable by sharing that world's homely 
needs and homely work. 

Sometimes, however, the conviction comes to the lit- 
erary worker that he is having something too much of 
drudgery. There are undoubtedly cases of this kind, 
but, after all, we cannot afford to lose the test which 
work for bread furnishes in deciding upon the genuine- 
ness of a literary man's mission. He who becomes 
soured by toil shows that he is not fit for prosperity, and 
cannot be trusted with it. He who makes the best of 
his conditions, and bends them all to the service of his 
art ; who keeps a good conscience in all his work, and 
makes men better and happier in winning the bread for 
himself and his dependants ; who learns to love his kind 
while sharing their toils, and to serve his God in serving 
them, is the man whose name is safe in the keeping of 
his country. The man, on the contrary, who takes his 
lot with discontent ; who ceases to do good work be- 
cause he must work or starve, and becomes willing at 
last to do any work that offers, writing on any required 
side of any prescribed question, shows himself made of 



38 Every -Day Topics. 

poor material — unworthy, under any circumstances, to 
hold a high place in the regard of his countrymen. If 
the ideal, literary life of freedom and leisure were best 
for the mass of literary workers, they would, doubtless, 
have it. If the pet notion of the modern dilettanti, that 
beauty is its own excuse for being, and that the artist 
has no mission which does not end in his art, were sound, 
we should find literary conditions adjusted to it. But 
the artist is a minister — a servant ; and, that he may 
learn his duty to his race, he must mingle with it, work 
with it, weep with it. Only thus can he know how to 
charm it with story and inspire it with song. 

The Reading of Periodicals. 

It is lamented by many that the reading of periodicals 
has become not only universal, but that it absorbs all 
the time of those who read them. It is supposed that, 
in consequence of these two facts, the quiet and thor- 
ough study of well-written books — books which deal 
with their subjects systematically and exhaustively — has 
been forsaken. As a consequence of this fact, it is fur- 
ther supposed that readers only get a superficial and 
desultory knowledge of the things they study, and that, 
although their knowledge covers many fields, they be- 
come nothing better than smatterers in any. 

We think these conclusions are hardly sustained by 
the large array of facts relating to them. We doubt 
whether the market for good books was ever any better 
than it is now. We have no statistics on the subject, 
but our impression is, that through the universal diffu- 
sion of periodical literature, and the knowledge of books 
conveyed and advertised by it, the book trade has been 
rather helped than harmed. It has multiplied readers 
and excited curiosity and interest touching all literature. 



Literature and Literary Men. 39 

There are hundreds of good books which would never 
reach the world but for the introduction and commen- 
dation of the periodical; and books are purchased now 
more intelligently than they ever were before. The 
librarians will tell us, too, that they find no falling off in 
their labors ; and we doubt whether our scholars would 
be willing to confess that they are less studious than for- 
merly. Science was never more active in its investiga- 
tions than now ; discovery was never pushed more effi- 
ciently and enthusiastically, and thought and speculation 
were never more busy concerning all the great subjects 
that affect the race. 

No, the facts do not sustain the conclusions of those 
who decry the periodical ; and when we consider how 
legitimately and necessarily it has grown out of the 
changes which progress has introduced, we shall conclude 
that they cannot do so. The daily newspaper, in its pres- 
ent splendid estate, is a child of the telegraph and the 
rail-car. As soon as it became possible for a man to sit 
at his breakfast-table and read of all the important events 
which took place in the whole world the day before, a 
want was born which only the daily paper could supply. 
If a man, absorbed in business and practical affairs, has 
time only to read the intelligence thus furnished, and 
the comments upon it and the discussions growing out 
of it, of course his reading stops there ; but what an in- 
calculable advantage in his business affairs has this hasty 
survey given him ! If he has more time than this, and 
has a love of science, the periodical brings to him every 
week or month the latest investigations and their results, 
and enables him to keep pace with his time. If the 
work of the various active scientists of the day were only 
embodied in elaborate books, he would never see and 
could never read one of them. In the periodical all the 
scientific men of the world meet. They learn there just 



40 Every-Day Topics. 

what each man is doing, and are constant inspirers and 
correctors of each other, while all the interested world 
studies them and keeps even-headed with them. A ten 
days' run from Liverpool brings to this country an in- 
stalment of the scientific labor of all Europe, and there 
is no possible form in which this can be gathered up and 
scattered except that of the periodical. In truth, we do 
not know of any class of men who would be more disas- 
trously affected by a suspension of periodical literature 
than those who have particularly decried it — the scholars 
and the scientists. 

Within the last twenty years, not only have the means 
of communication been incalculably increased, but the 
domain of knowledge has been very greatly enlarged ; 
and the fact is patent that periodical literature has been 
developed in the same proportion. It has grown out of 
the new necessities, and must ultimately arrange itself 
by certain laws. At present, it is in a degree of confu- 
sion ; but at last the daily paper will announce facts, 
the scientific journal will describe discoveries and pro- 
cesses, the weekly paper will be the medium of popu- 
lar discussion, the magazine and review will furnish the 
theatre of the thinker and the literary artist, and the 
book, sifting all — facts, processes, thoughts, and artistic 
fabrics, and crystallizations of thought — will record all 
that is worthy of preservation, to enter permanently into 
the life and literature of the world. This is the tendency 
at the present time, although the aim may not be intelli- 
gent and definite, or the end clearly seen. Each class 
of periodicals has its office in evolving from the crude 
facts of the every-day history of politics, religion, morals, 
society and science those philosophic conclusions and ar- 
tistic creations that make up the solid literature of the 
country ; and this office will be better defined as the 
years go by. 



Literature and Literary Men. 41 

We do not see that it is anything against the magazine 
that it has become the medium by which books of an 
ephemeral nature find their way to the public. The 
novel, almost universally, makes its first appearance as a 
serial. Mac Donald, Collins, Reade, George Eliot, Mrs. 
Stowe, Mrs. Whitney, Trollope — in fact, all the princi- 
pal novelists — send their productions to the public 
through the magazines ; and it is certainly better to dis- 
tribute the interest of these through the year than to de- 
vour them en masse. They come to the public in this 
way in their cheapest form, and find ten readers where 
in the book form they would find one. They are read, 
too, as serials, mingled with a wider and more valuable 
range of literature, as they always should be read. Any- 
thing is good which prevents literary condiments from 
being adopted as literary food. 

If the fact still remains that there are multitudes who 
will read absolutely nothing but periodical literature, 
where is the harm ? This is a busy world, and the great 
multitude cannot purchase large libraries. Ten or fif- 
teen dollars' worth of periodicals places every working 
family in direct relations with the great sources of cur- 
rent intelligence and thought, and illuminates their home 
life as no other such expenditure can do. The masses 
have neither the money to buy books nor the leisure to 
read them. The periodical becomes, then, the demo- 
cratic form of literature. It is the intellectual food of 
the people. It stands in the very front rank of the 
agents of civilization, and in its way, directly and indi- 
rectly, is training up a generation of book-readers. It is 
the pioneer : the book will come later. In the mean- 
time, it becomes all those who provide periodicals for 
the people to take note of the fact, that their work has 
been proved to be a good one by the growing demand 
for a higher style of excellence in the materials they fur- 



42 Every -Day Topics. 

nish. The day of trash and padding is past, or rapidly 
passing. The popular magazine of to-day is such a maga- 
zine as the world never saw before ; and the popular 
magazine of America is demonstrably better than any 
popular magazine in the world. We are naturally more 
familiar with this class of periodical literature than any 
other, and we make the statement without qualification 
or reservation. That it is truly educating its readers is 
proved by the constant demand for its own improve- 
ment. 

The Morals of Journalism. 

In the discussions of journalism which have been 
started by editorial conventions and the establishment 
of chairs of journalism in one or two academic institu- 
tions, it is well not to forget the matter of morals. A 
great deal of indignation has been meted out to those 
presses which publish quack advertisements, calculated 
to encourage vice and crime. In this thing, a gnat is 
strained at that a camel may be swallowed ; for, almost 
without exception, the papers which denounce and refuse 
to publish these advertisements, take endless pains to 
spread before their readers the details of the crimes 
which the advertisements are supposed to engender or 
encourage. Murders, suicides, seductions, adulteries, 
burglaries, thefts, scandals — all disagreeable and dis- 
graceful things — detailed histories of events which appeal 
to prurient tastes and a morbid desire for coarse and 
brutal excitements — are not these the leading material 
of a great number of our daily papers ? We may be 
mistaken, but we believe that there is no department 
of the world's news given with such exhaustive particu- 
larity as that which relates to vice and crime. If this 
be doubted, let the first paper at hand be taken up, and 



Literature and Literary Men. 43 

the fact will, we think, be determined as we apprehend 
it. We know that in many papers the remedial agencies 
of society — the churches, schools, social conventions — 
private and organized charities — beg for space that is 
freely accorded to the record of a petty theft or a hus- 
band's or wife's infidelity. That which will make a spicy 
paragraph is chosen before that which will make a 
healthy one. 

Nor is this all. The crimes which are thus spread be- 
fore the public for its daily food are often treated like 
anything but crimes. Some of our papers have a way of 
doing up their columns of local crime as if it were all a 
joke. The writer makes an ingenious jest of everything 
he is called upon to notice. The poor women who are 
lost to virtue and society, with hell within them and be- 
fore them, furnish grateful themes for the reporter's 
careless pleasantries. Their arraignment, their trial, 
their sentence, their appearance, their words, are 
chronicled in unfeeling slang, with the intent to excite 
laughter. That which to a good man or woman is in- 
finitely pathetic is made to appear a matter to be 
laughed at, or to be passed over as of no account. A 
case of infidelity in the marriage relation, involving the 
destruction of the peace of families, the disgrace of 
children, and the irremediable shame of the parties 
primarily concerned, comes to us labelled : " rich de- 
velopments." The higher the life involved and the 
purer the reputation, the " richer " the " developments " 
always. Nothing pleases our jesting reporter like large 
game. A clergyman is the best, next a lay member, 
and then any man or woman who may be in a high 
social position. "Crime in high life " is a particularly 
grateful dish for those to serve up who cater for the 
prurient public. It is impossible not to conclude that 
the men who write these items and articles delight in 



44 Every -Day Topics. 

them, and that the men who publish them regard them 
only with relation to their mercantile value. We know 
of nothing more heartless than the way in which crim- 
inals and crime are treated by a portion of the daily 
press, and nothing more demoralizing to the public and 
to those who are guilty of trifling with them under the 
license of the reporter's pen. It is a bad, bad business. 
It is an evil which every paper claiming to be respec- 
table ought to cut up, root and branch. So long as crime 
is treated lightly it is encouraged. So long, too, as the 
edifying, informing, remedial and purifying agencies of 
the world are subordinated in the public notice to the 
records of vice and crime, simply because they are less 
startling or spicy, it is nonsense to talk about quack 
advertisements, and a parade of mock virtue which de- 
serves both to be pitied and laughed at. 

The daily paper has now become a visitor in every 
family of ordinary intelligence. It has become the daily 
food of children and youth all over our country, and it 
ought never to hold a record which would naturally leave 
an unwholesome effect upon their minds. If crime is re- 
corded, it should be recorded as crime, and with a con- 
scientious exclusion of all details that the editor would 
exclude were he called upon to tell the story to his boy 
upon his knee, or to his grown-up daughter sitting at his 
side. The way in which nastiness and beastliness are 
advertised in criminal reports is abominable. It is not 
necessary : it is not on any account desirable. A thou- 
sand things of greater moment and of sweeter import 
pass unnoticed by the press every day. The apology 
that the press must be exact, impartial, faithful, literal, 
etc., is a shabby one. A press is never impartial, when, 
by the predominance it gives to crime in its reports, it 
conveys the impression that crime is the most impor- 
tant thing to be reported, when, in truth, it is the least 



Literature and Literary Men. 45 

important. Its records do not hinder crime, do not 
nourish virtue, do not advance intelligence, do not purify 
youth, do not build up the best interests of society ; and 
the absorption of the columns of the public press by them 
is a stupendous moral nuisance that' ought to be abated. 
We do not expect the press to be very much in ad- 
vance of the people, either in morality or intelligence. 
It is quite as much the outgrowth as the leader of our 
civilization, but it ought to be an emanation from the 
best American spirit and culture, and not the worst. We 
shall have, probably, so long as crime exists, profes- 
sional scavengers who follow in its way to glean and 
gorge its uncleanness. We have such now, and a 
beastly brood who glean after them even ; but why a 
press claiming to be respectable should deem it its duty 
to assist in their dirty work surpasses our comprehension. 
We repeat — it is not necessary : it is not on any account 
desirable. 

Lord Lytton. 

One of the most striking and memorable statements 
made by George MacDonald, in his lecture on Robert 
Burns, was, that the first grand requisite of a poet is a 
heart. No matter how brilliant a man's intellect may be, 
no matter how high and fine his culture, no matter how 
cunning and careful his art, if he have not a heart that 
brings him not only into sympathy with his kind, but 
with all life of plant and animal, and all life of God as 
it breathes through, and is manifested in, inanimate 
nature, the essential qualification of the poet is wanting. 
This proposition may stand as a canon of criticism by 
right of its own self-evident truthfulness, no less than by 
the testimony of all literary history. A thousand bril- 
liant men have risen and passed away, attracting wide 
attention while they lived, but warming and fructifying 



46 Every-Day Topics. 

no mind by their light, and expiring at last like a burnt- 
out star, leaving no trace in the sky. So near the earth 
were they, that their light failed at once when the 
fountain failed, while many a lesser star, by burning 
nearer heaven, has been able to send down its rays for 
centuries after its fires were extinguished. 

Lord Lytton had what may be called a very success- 
ful literary life, and, politically and socially, was a 
power in his day and generation. He had wealth, he had 
position, he had a marvellous culture, he had fame, he 
had great industry, he held the curious eye and the at- 
tentive ear of the world, he had an imperious ambition, 
he had something more than talent — gifts which only 
needed the talismanic touch of love to make them ge- 
nius — he had everything but the one thing needful to 
make him a poet. That one needful thing was a heart. 
No man ever accused or suspected him of possessing 
anything that could bear so precious a name. His 
neighbors tell us that he was a bad man ; his wife af- 
firms the same fact ; and all that he has left to us of his 
enormous literary work sustains their personal testimony. 
Marvellous jewelry of thought and fancy has he bequeathed 
to us — beautiful stones in beautiful settings — but there is 
no blood in his rubies ; there is no heaven in his sapphires ; 
and all his diamonds are " off color." He has a place in 
history ; his works stand in long rows upon many a library 
shelf in his own and other lands ; but Lord Lytton is dead, 
and his works are nearly so. They enter no more into 
the life of the world. They never did enter into the life 
of the world as a beneficent power. Were it not for two 
or three plays which still hold to the boards, he, with all 
his works, would be as dead to day as Julius Caesar. 

Simple Bobby Burns, with morals hardly less offen- 
sive than his of whom we write, goes singing down the 
centuries, and making music through the silence that 



Literature and Literary Men. 47 

shrouds the memory of our titled litterateur. It is not 
because he was good, or pure, or true even to himself, 
but because he was in sympathy with life, and did not 
sit and sing, poised in the superb selfishness from which 
Lord Lytton addressed the world. He loved nature, he 
loved mankind, he entered sympathetically into human 
trial and trouble ; he hated oppression, he despised cant, 
he respected and defended manhood ; and with all his 
weaknesses, over which he mourned and with which he 
struggled, he revered Christian goodness. The high and 
the humble recognize him as a brother. In brief, he had 
a heart, and without that heart all his wonderful gifts would 
have availed him nothing. Without that heart, and its 
manifestation in song, his name would long since have been 
forgotten, and the poetry he left would have been swept 
away among the vulgar trash of earlier and coarser times. 
The same thing may be said, only less emphatically, 
of Dickens. The personal character of Dickens can 
hardly be regarded as admirable, even by those who 
loved him most ; yet he had a heart which brought him 
into sympathy with all those phases of humanity which 
were intellectually interesting to him. He loved the 
rascals whom he painted, and enjoyed the society of the 
weakest men and women of his pages ; and it is this sym- 
pathy which gives immortality to his novels. Pickwick 
and David Copperfield are as fresh to-day as when they 
were written, and are sure to be read by many generations 
yet to come ; yet the learning, culture, and position of 
the man — his gifts and acquirements and art — were all 
inferior to those of Lord Lytton. His superiority was in his 
heart and his sympathy, and on these he stands far above 
his titled contemporary in the popular regard. Bulwer is a 
name whose home is in catalogues and biographical dic- 
tionaries. Dickens is a man whom the people love. One 
is a memory ; the other a living and abiding presence. 



48 Every-Day Topics. 

No poet or novelist can greatly benefit the world who 
does not become the object of popular affection ; and 
this popular affection cannot be secured without the 
manifestation of sympathy. There was no lack of power 
in Bulwer, but there was a lack of that quality which was 
necessary to bring him inside the better sympathies of 
human nature. No art emanating from supreme selfish- 
ness can ever command a permanent place in the world. 
Heartless art is loveless art, useless art, dead art. Fine 
art without fine feeling is a rose without fragrance. 
Poetry without sympathy bears the same relation to true 
poetry that the music of the orchestrion, turned by a 
water-wheel, bears to that of the violin, singing or moan- 
ing in the passionate hands of a master. 

Lord Lytton passes away, and no man stops his neigh- 
bor in the street to speak of it. He lived the splendid, 
selfish life he chose to live ; he was the admired, the 
petted, the courted, the titled, the rich man of litera- 
ture ; but his fame was as heartless and loveless as him- 
self. No worthy man covets his name and fame. No 
young man finds in him virtues to emulate, or excellences 
to inspire. No man finds in his work the stimulus to 
■purity, to nobleness, to goodness. He lived to his 
autumn, but his fruit, brought to premature beauty by 
the worms it bred, rots where it fell, and his leaves, 
brilliant with many dyes, fall at the touch of the frost, 
to be trodden under foot or swept away by the wind. 

The Difficulty with Dickens. 

" Was Charles Dickens a believer in our Saviour's life 
and teachings ? " is the question which a few men have 
attempted to answer. Now, we beg the privilege of sug- 
gesting that it is not of the slightest consequence to the 
world or to Christianity whether Mr. Dickens believed 



Literature and Literary Men. 49 

in our Saviour's life and teachings or not. He could do 
that without having the belief of the least advantage to 
himself or his fellow-men. The devils believe — and — 
tremble. Have we any certificate that Mr. Dickens 
trembled ? It should have gone as far as that, at least. 
No ; if Mr. Dickens was a Christian — and this, after 
all, is the real question that the world cares for — there 
must be better evidences of the fact than appear in the 
defences under consideration. If he was a Christian, he 
was fond during his life of Christian people. With as 
hearty a hatred of sectarianism and bigotry and cant as 
Mr. Dickens himself ever entertained, we declare in all 
candor that there are men and women in the world who 
are informed and moved by the spirit of the Master. 
They love mankind for His sake. They devote their 
lives and labors, and yield their hearts' best love to Him. 
They are pure, and sweet, and good. They live lives of 
prayer and benevolence. If Mr. Dickens was a Chris- 
tian, he loved the society of these people, and was su- 
premely interested in their aims and ends of life. When 
between these and those who so often invited him to the 
convivial table he was called upon to choose, he made a 
Christian choice. So his defenders should not have been 
content to tell what Mr. Dickens believed, but they 
should have shown by his sympathies with Christian 
people that he possessed the Christian spirit. They 
should have shown how he always labored heart and 
hand with the Christian Church in every good work ; 
how for that religion which is the hope of the world he 
spent money and sacrificed time and talents, that its be- 
nign influence might be spread among the nations of the 
earth and the ignorant multitudes of his own nation. 
His ardent sympathy with Christian missions should have 
been brought forward, and his love and respect for Chris- 
tian ministers, as displayed in his novels. If all this had 
Vol. I.—; * 



50 Every -Day Topics. 

been done, the question would have been more nearly 
settled than it is. 

It may be suggested again that Mr. Dickens's friend- 
liness to Christian reforms would do much, when prop- 
erly presented, to establish his Christian character be- 
fore the world. 

In the long period of his literary life, during which he 
had the ear and the heart of the English-reading world, a 
million men and women — more or less — in Great Britain 
sank into the miserable grave of the drunkard. The 
liquor-fiend desolated the kingdom. He burned up the 
health and the prosperity of the nation. He instigated 
murder, robbery, and all forms of cruel violence. He 
beat women and maimed little children, even before they 
were born. He assumed all seductive forms, and tempt- 
ed the young to their ruin. Everywhere his work was 
degradation, desecration, and destruction. No pen can 
record — nay, no imagination can picture — the evils — the 
loathsome horrors — inflicted upon the British nation 
during those thirty years, by ,the demon of strong drink. 
To show how valiantly, how persistently, and how power- 
fully Mr. Dickens worked to stem the tide of intemper- 
ance in his own and other lands, to repeat his w T ords of 
cheer to all who labored for the suppression of the great 
curse, to present his immaculate example of abstinence 
for the sake of one of the least of those who possibly 
might be helped by it, to picture the noble characters 
he has left upon his printed pages to represent his ideal 
temperance reformers — this would certainly be better 
than to tell what he believed, and would go to show 
something of the practical power of his belief. 

Still again : Mr. Dickens lived during a period when 
the sanctities of Christian marriage were assailed by pre- 
tended revelations and infidel philosophies and bold 
beastliness. He belonged to a guild whose members 



Liter attire and Literary Men. 51 

had been conspicuously unhappy in their marriage rela- 
tions. Hundreds of literary men and literary women 
had separated from their companions, and brought dis- 
grace upon themselves, their class, and the sacred in- 
stitution whose bonds they so lightly snapped asunder. 
To such lengths had one of them gone, that, after ab- 
sorbing the lovely youth of his wife — nay, after having 
lived with her for twenty years, and seen pillowed in her 
maternal arms his large family of beautiful children, he 
decided that her nature was incompatible with his own, 
and that they must separate — a decision which seems so 
sadly cruel that we can find no words to give it fitting 
characterization. To be able to say that in such a time 
as this Mr. Dickens, though sorely tempted by his own 
temperament and by the circumstances in which he found 
himself, stood with Christian resignation and Christian 
honor by his vows, would be grand indeed, and would 
do much to relieve his eulogists of future questions re- 
lating to the Christian character of their subject. We 
marvel that means of vindication so close at hand as 
these should have been entirely overlooked. 

For thirty years we have been an interested reader and 
a devoted admirer of Charles Dickens. We believe we 
have appreciated his rare genius and all his good and 
noble impulses. Kind things have been said of him and 
his memory in this magazine, and it is only when his 
self-appointed champions insist on holding him up be- 
fore the American people a2 a Christian saint that we 
feel compelled to protest. If Christianity is something 
to be bottled up in a last will and testament, or only used 
for the purposes of art and literature, it is very cheap 
stuff and is not, really, worth making much ado about. 
If it is something which softens, purifies, and elevates 
character, and reforms and regulates life, it is not at 
all necessary to inquire what a man believes. If Mr. 



52 Every-Day Topics. 

Dickens yielded his life to the supreme control of Chris- 
tian motives he was a Christian man ; and, for the life 
of us, we do not see how he could have been otherwise. 
Nor do we see how we can do better in the attempt to 
determine this — and we are not responsible for this at- 
tempt — than to examine with the eye of common sense 
the manifestations and outcome of his life. 



CRITICISM. 

A Heresy of Art. 

MORE than fifty years ago Wordsworth said, in one 
of his most carefully prepared utterances, that 
" poetry is most just to its divine origin when it admin- 
isters the comforts and breathes the spirit of religion." 
It was no new proposition, either to him or to the world. 
The connections in which he placed it showed that he 
regarded it as soundly established and universally ac- 
cepted. Of course, poetry can only " administer the 
comforts " of religion by direct design ; and, by neces- 
sity, the design to fulfil this function is not only legiti- 
mate, but laudable in the exercise of poetic art. A re- 
cent writer, discoursing of poetry, speaks of an excep- 
tionally successful poem, whose title and authorship he 
does not give us, as originating in a moral rather than a 
poetic inspiration. If he had been more explicit, and 
said all that he intended to convey, he would have said 
that no true poem can spring from a purely moral in- 
spiration. If he had gone still farther, and revealed to 
us the fully rounded heresy of his school, he would have 
said that there can be no true poem and no true work of 
art that by original and carefully executed design is 
framed and armed to produce a moral result upon the 
souls of men. If this school is to be believed, the poetic 
muse is never to be either teacher or preacher ; and a 



54 Every -Day Topics. 

poem with a moral is a work of art with that one fatal 
blot, or taint, or weakness or unseemly superfluity which 
destroys its genuineness. 

During our recent civil war, a gifted woman of New 
England gave utterance to the overflowing religious and 
patriotic sentiments of her section by writing a hymn 
which was sung by the Union armies wherever they bore 
their banners, or whitened the hills with their camps. 
It was one of the grandest and most stirring of all the 
tuneful utterances of the time. Suppose some man, 
speaking of this, were to say that the most successful 
army hymn or song that had been given to the world 
within the last ten years was the offspring of a patriotic 
rather than a poetic inspiration ! Suppose he should 
sneer at Burns's " Highland Mary" because those im- 
mortally sweet verses were born of a boy's pure love, that 
only sought expression in them ! What should we think 
of such a man ? What ought to be thought of such 
a man ? Simply, that he is so utterly misled by a false 
theory of art as to be incapable of saying any worthy 
and valuable thing about it. 

But the critic does not say this, and he will not say it. 
It is not that a poem may not be inspired by the love of 
a woman, or by the love of country, or by the love of 
fame, or by the love of beauty ; it is that it cannot be 
inspired by the love of God — Himself the Great Inspirer ! 
So long as the poet deals with the flowers of the field, 
that rise to his eye and beat with soft wings at the bars 
of all his senses for admission to his soul, he writes 
poetry ; but when he touches those sentiments of the 
religious spirit which open themselves to The Divine, 
and rise with aspiration, adoration, love, and praise, he 
strikes prose and writes stuff! We declare this to be a 
heresy so degrading to art, so belittling to the minds en- 
tertaining it, so subversive and perversive of all sound 



Criticism. 5 5 

criticism, that until it shall be overthrown there can be 
no such thing as progress in literary art among those 
who entertain it. Even our beloved Whittier, singing 
away his beautiful life, and soaring while he sings, is im- 
patiently accused of " preaching" because his songs are 
less and less of the earth from which he retires, and 
more and more of the heaven into which he rises ! 

If art may convey one lesson, it may another. If it 
is legitimate for art to bear one burden, it may bear a 
hundred ; and the heresy of which we speak, in con- 
demning all art that springs from a moral inspiration, 
condems the best, nay, the only worthy things that 
have been created in every department of art. If 
George MacDonald is not a true artist, there is no true 
artist writing the English language ; yet he literally writes 
nothing that is not the offspring of a moral or a religious 
inspiration. The lady who writes over the nom de plume 
of George Eliot is the greatest living Englishwoman — a 
woman who, since Mrs. Browning died, has had no peer 
as a literary artist among her sex ; but she carefully 
elaborates in her best work a high moral purpose, and, 
lest some fool may possibly miss or mistake it, she works 
it all into the last page of " Romola." "It is only a 
poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring 

very much about our own narrow pleasures 

There are so many things wrong and difficult in the 
world that no man can be great — he can hardly keep him- 
self from wickedness — unless he gives up thinking about 
pleasures and rewards, and gets strength to endure what 
is hard and painful." What is " Aurora Leigh," by 
the greatest poetess of our century, if not all time, but 
one long and carefully elaborated lesson of life ? Every 
book that comes from the pens of Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. 
Whitney, our best living female writers in America, is 
thoroughly charged with moral purpose ; and Hawthorne, 



56 Every -Day Topics. 

than whom no writer of English stands higher as an ar- 
tist, was not content in his best book — " The Scarlet 
Letter" — to permit his lesson to be inferred, but he 
put it into words : "Be true, be true, be true ! " With 
the heretics under discussion, it is entirely legitimate 
for a heathen to embody his religion in his poetry, and 
to use his religion as material of poetry ; but when a 
Christian undertakes to do the same thing he is warned 
off, and informed that no poetry can come of a purely 
moral or religious inspiration. 

There is a noteworthy coincidence in the fact that the 
theories of the nature and province of art upon which 
we have animadverted exist only or mainly in association 
with infidel opinions. It is not to be denied that there 
is in America a large circle of literary men and women 
from whom all sincere faith in Christianity and in the in- 
terest of God in the affairs of men has gone out. They 
are just as fond of preaching in and through art as they 
are of preaching in the pulpit. They regard with pity- 
ing contempt those whose faith still stands by the reve- 
lations of The Great Book, and read with impatience all 
those utterances of literary art which are inspired by it. 
That their lack of faith in the grand, central truths of 
their own nature, relations, and history should lead them 
into absurd and inconsistent theories of art, is not 
strange ; but it is strange that Christian men and women 
have not more openly protested against those theories, 
and strange that many have not only been puzzled by 
them, but have been half inclined to accept them. It is 
well that Heaven takes care of its own, and impels each 
man whom it moves to artistic utterance to speak forth 
that which is in him in his own best way, and, regard- 
less of theories, to go on doing so while he lives. More 
than this : It is well that the world has a sense of its 
own needs, and gratefully recognizes the heavenly ere- 



Criticism. 57 

dentials of that art which comes to it with gifts and 
deeds of ministry. 

Criticism as a Fine Art. 

A brief article, entitled " Criticism as a Fine Art," 
which appeared not long since in a foreign magazine, 
from the pen of Mr. Arthur Mattheson, was a notable 
production that did not receive the attention in America 
which its merits deserved. Nothing more remarkable 
for acuteness of insight, justness of judgment, and appo- 
siteness of illustration has appeared, within our knowl- 
edge, upon this subject. The conclusion arrived at by 
the writer is, that there is no such thing as a science of 
criticism — that there are no such universally recognized 
canons of critical art as will enable any two writers of 
different mental organization and differing education 
and opinions to arrive at identical decisions regarding a 
literary work, worthy of being criticised at all. This be- 
ing proved or admitted, it follows that criticism is noth- 
ing more or less than the method by which the critic re- 
veals, not the characteristics of the author criticised, but 
those of himself. Thus, all the science there is in the 
matter applies to the critic, and not to the work he criti- 
cises. Given a certain book, and a critic of certain 
social, political, and religious opinions, with a certain 
grade of culture, and the critique he will write can be 
predetermined. The abstract or absolute merits of the 
book, if it have any, have nothing whatever to do with 
the critic's decision. What he does is simply to describe 
himself and define his standpoint ; and the book is used 
simply as a means for the end aimed at in entire uncon- 
sciousness. 

The truthfulness of Mr. Mattheson's theory is proved 
by the history of criticism ; for nothing is better known 
3* 



58 Every- Day Topics. 

than that the great books of the world have made their 
way and their place in total disregard of its decisions. 
Though a thousand critics determine that a book ought 
not to live, if it is a real book it lives, without the slight- 
est reference to their opinions and protests. What the 
critics prove by their work is, simply their lack of power 
to comprehend and appreciate it. They prove nothing 
against the book whatever. There has not lived a great 
British author within the last century whose works have 
not been subjected to the most scorching criticisms and 
the most slashing and sweeping condemnations. Yet 
those criticisms and condemnations have passed for 
nothing. The criticisms, often profoundly ingenious, 
and full of learning and power, die, and the books live. 
They are often exceedingly creditable productions — so 
creditable, indeed, that they form the basis of great 
personal reputations — but they accomplish absolutely 
nothing except the revelation of the men who produce 
them. Criticism thus becomes a form of personal ex- 
pression, and is just as thoroughly individualized as if it 
were poetry, or picture, or sculpture. The critic takes 
a book in one hand, and uses the other to paint him- 
self with. When his work is done we may fail to find 
the book in it, but we are sure to find him. 

The growth in the popular regard of the music of 
Wagner might have furnished a forcible illustration to 
Mr. Mattheson of the soundness of his position, had he 
needed more than he used. No great musician of the 
century has been so persistently sneered at by the critics 
as Wagner. His music has been called, in derision, 
" The music of the future," until the phrase is every- 
where identified with his productions. The young King 
of Bavaria has been supposed to be half daft, because, 
in addition to his other eccentricities, he has believed in 
Wagner, and devoted himself to him. During this storm 



Criticism. 59 

of detraction, which has rattled over the whole world, 
Wagner has been quietly and most fruitfully at work ; 
and, as a single home -comment on his music, it is pleas- 
ant to recall the Wagner-evening given at Thomas's 
Garden among the closing summer concerts by the finest 
of our orchestras. The last work of the season was ex- 
pended upon Wagner's music, and it drew together a 
great crowd of the first musicians of the city and of the 
country about us. " The music of the future " has be- 
come the music of the present. The critics, in deriding 
or denouncing it, simply proclaim their inability to com- 
prehend it, and their mocking phrase stares them in the 
face as a grand prophecy fulfilled. 

Viewed from Mr. Mattheson's position, criticism be- 
comes one of the most amusing branches of our litera- 
ture. The opinion of a journal upon a literary work is, 
after all, only the self-revelation of a man. When we 
look through the pretentious and authoritative types, 
into the manuscript written by some unfledged littera- 
teur, or some disappointed and soured hireling, or some 
pretender charged with the affectation of learning, or 
some specialist possessed by his one idea, or some zealot 
or partisan, or some greedy seeker for sensation and 
notoriety, we lose our respect for much that passes for 
criticism, and learn the reason of its powerlessness in 
determining the public opinion. A poor fellow who 
pumps his brain and levies contributions on his com- 
monplace books, and crams himself with the lumber of 
libraries, to show how much more he knows than the 
authors upon whom he presumes to sit in judgment, is a 
funny spectacle to everybody but his unconscious self. 

The general worthlessness of criticism is shown best, 
perhaps, in the fact that the view which any "given peri- 
odical will take of any given book can always be pre- 
dicted by any man thoroughly conversant with the views, 



60 Every-Day Topics. 

prejudices, and spirit of its conductors. Two periodi- 
cals, edited with equal talent and learning, can always 
be selected which will present opinions diametrically op- 
posed to each other on any book of positive qualities. 
As a general thing, criticism has no drift. It is a con- 
fused mass of individual opinions whose tendency is to 
destroy each other. It may assist the public in getting 
a view of the different sides of a literary work, but it 
does not determine anything, and is not relied upon to 
determine anything. Indeed, it is so contradictory that 
it cannot possibly determine anything but its own worth- 
lessness. In view of these facts, the ex cathedra judg- 
ments of some of our journals are laughable enough, 
especially when we remember how sincerely their au- 
thors believe in their own judicial wisdom, and how dis- 
gusted they are with the fact that the world will not 
endorse it. Mr. Mattheson has at least helped us to 
apprehend one office of criticism not commonly known 
hitherto. It quite reverses the point of observation and 
study, but it makes it more interesting, and ought to 
make it more useful. 

The Indecencies of Criticism. 

The uses of competent and candid criticism are vari- 
ous. The first is to assist the public in ariving at a just 
judgment of the various productions of literature and 
art, and the enlightenment and correction of their pro- 
ducers. Nothing that passes for, or pretends to be, crit- 
icism, is worthy of the name, that does not accomplish 
these objects ; and these results, in various forms, may 
be grouped under the head of information. The next 
object is one of education. The processes of criticism 
are educational, both to the critic and to the public. 
The study of the various forms of art — literary, archi- 



Criticism. 61 

tectural, pictorial, plastic ; the discussions of relations, 
proportions, details ; the exposition of the rules of con- 
struction as they relate to the body of a work, and of 
vitalizing principle, purpose and taste, as they relate to 
its spirit — all these are educational. They fit not only 
the public, but the critic himself, to judge of other 
works. They assist in building up a public judgment, 
and in training the public mind for the trial of that 
which comes before it for sentence. The office of criti- 
cism is one of the most important, dignified, and diffi- 
cult, that a writer is ever called upon to assume. It re- 
quires not only a sound head, but a good heart. It calls 
not only for wide knowledge, fine intellectual gifts, and 
a closely discriminating judicial mind, but for a cath- 
olicity of sympathy and a broad good-will that will en- 
able a man to handle his materials without prejudice, 
and lead him to his work with the wish to find, and the 
purpose to exhibit, all of worthiness it possesses. A 
critic must be able to find the inside of an author's de- 
sign, and to get his outlook from the inside. In brief, 
he must be a very rare man. He need not be able to 
produce the works upon which he sits in judgment, but 
he should at least be able sympathetically to apprehend 
the nature and purpose of the producer, and large and 
many-sided enough to grasp and entertain the great va- 
riety of human genius and power, and their multifarious 
products. 

How many competent critics have we in America ? 
Not many. The critical judgment furnishes the most 
notable jargon of the literary world. There is not a 
work of art worth noticing at all that does not use up, in 
its critical characterization, all the adjectives of praise 
and dispraise. To one, a book may be a farrago of non- 
sense ; to another, the finest flight of human genius. So 
ludicrous do these contrarieties of opinion appear, and 



62 Every- Day Topics. 

so little do publishers and the public care for them, that 
they are published side by side in the advertisements of 
booksellers as " the unbiassed opinions of the press." 
So ludicrous are they, indeed, that the public have 
ceased to be guided by them. It is often the case that 
books which win the widest praise find no market what- 
ever, while those which are greeted with critical derision 
reach no end of editions. The shameful fact is, or 
seems to be, that the public have no faith in the criti- 
cism of the day. They read criticism for amusement as 
they would read a novel, and straightway buy the book 
the record of whose condemnation is fresh in their 
minds, tolerably sure of finding the worth of their pur- 
chase-money. Who are these men of warring counsels 
and conclusions ? 

A. runs a country paper. He writes no criticisms 
himself, but there is a young man at his elbow, fresh 
from college, who is literary, or nothing. He has read 
little, and thought less ; but criticism gives him practice 
in writing ; so he writes. He has no well-formed opinion 
on anything, but he must express an opinion. The solid 
work of some old man of letters comes into his hands, 
and then the young progressive gets his chance. Woe to 
the old fogy who presumes to write a book ! Incapable of 
writing his mother tongue well, with nothing in his head 
but the contents of his college text-books, with no ex- 
perience of life, with no culture, with no practical knowl- 
edge of the great questions that engage the thinkers of 
the age, the young man sits down and demolishes the 
work of one by the side of whom he is but an infant of 
days. He parades what little knowledge he possesses, 
through legitimate study or illegitimate cram, and when 
his critique appears, he prances around and parades it 
before his friends. This sort of job is supposed to assist 
the public in forming an intelligent opinion ! 



Criticism. 63 

B. writes his own criticisms. He edits a country pa- 
per by downright hard work. He is fond of receiving 
the favors of publishers, and anxious to please them. 
All the week long the books accumulate upon his table 
until, on Friday or Saturday, they must be attended to, 
or they will overwhelm him. So he starts at the top of 
the pile and works down through. Up to the moment 
of his beginning, he has not looked inside of a cover. 
He copies the titles, looks at the preface, glances at an 
expression here and there, and then records his judg- 
ment. In three hours he has finished ; and the batch of 
"book notices " goes in, with the knowledge on the part 
of the writer that there is not a competent criticism in 
the number, though there may be twenty ex cathedra 
opinions. Not a book has been read, and nothing be- 
yond a first impresssion has been recorded ; and, again, 
the public is supposed to have been very much enlight- 
ened ! 

C. is the editor of a feeble sheet to which he wishes to 
attract attention. He knows that his candid judgment 
is not accounted for much, so he tries an uncandid one. 
He will win notice by the amount of fur which he can 
strip off and set flying ; by the streams of blood he can 
set flowing ; by the hurts he can inflict ; by the outrages 
he can commit. To him an author or an artist is fair 
game. His paper must live. His paper shall live. He 
sails under a black flag, and, because people think a pi- 
rate interesting, they flock around to look upon his ugly 
craft and examine his ensanguined shirt-sleeves. He is 
a man who stands no nonsense, and acknowledges no 
loyalty to the amenities of life. He caricatures women 
in his pages, or tells them that they are old and ugly. 
He perpetrates personal affronts, for which he ought to 
be knocked down like a dog ; and when taken to task 
for them, he talks about the sacrifices that all men suffer 



64 Every-Day Topics. 

who undertake thorough criticism ! So here is another 
manufacturer of public opinion. 

D. is a dyspeptic, who simply voids his spleen on 
paper. He is obliged to write for a living, and his 
breakfast invariably rises sour in his gorge. His physi- 
cian can prescribe for him as well by reading his criti- 
cism as a quack can by examining his glandular secre- 
tions in a vial, and can see just where an antacid, or a 
mercurial, or a tonic, would tone down a judgment, or 
modify an expression, or elevate him to appreciation. 
He uses a sharp pen, and tempers his ink with vinegar. 
He is cross and crotchety. It is as hard for an author 
or an artist to get along with him as it is for his wife and 
children. He must have vent for his humor, and the in- 
nocent books that come to him must suffer. The boy 
who pounds his thumb with a hammer throws his ham- 
mer through the nearest mirror, purely as an expression 
of his mingled pain and anger. The mirror is not in the 
least to blame, but something must be smashed to avoid 
swearing. The dyspeptic critic operates in the same 
way, and his criticisms are the natural outcome of the 
horrors and irritations of his indigestion. 

E. is a partisan, and the member of a clique. All 
that is done inside the circle in which, by choice or cir- 
cumstances, he finds himself placed, is rightly done. 
The pets of that clique can do no wrong. To exhibit 
their excellences, to paint their superiorities, to cackle 
vicariously over their eggs, is one-half of the business of 
his life. The other half is to cheapen, pick in pieces, 
ridicule, ■ condemn, and, so far as he can, destroy the 
work of all outside of the charmed line which circum- 
scribes the area of his sympathies. Within his field all 
growths are divine : sun-flowers are suns, daisies are 
dahlias, crab-apples are pomegranates, and an onion is 
the fountain of tearful emotion. Outside of his field, 



Criticism. 6$ 

the land is desert, and the people are barbarians, who 
not only do nothing well, but who are guilty of great 
presumption in attempting to do anything at all. It is 
the land of the thorn and the thistle. There dwells the 
wild ass. There hammers, among senseless echoes, the 
lonely bittern. There poisonous waters break on barren 
shores, and there dwell the graceless infidels who do 
not worship toward the holy hill, humbly at whose foot 
he has reared hi<6 tabernacle. 

F. is a man whose theory of criticism compels him to 
simple fault-finding. He may have brains, culture, 
acumen, or none or little of all these, but it has never 
entered into his head that criticism calls for the discrim- 
ination of excellences. His business is to pick flaws, 
and he does it without reference to any man's standard 
of taste, or point of purpose, but his own. He takes no 
account of an author's peculiar power, or the kind of 
audience he addresses and seeks to move. He belongs 
to no clique ; vaunts his independence ; and demon- 
strates that independence by finding all the fault possi- 
ble with everything that comes to him. He assumes 
to be a sort of inspector-general of literary and artistic 
wares, and sorts them, as they come along, by their de- 
fects. A rose may be beautiful and fragrant, but if he 
finds a petal over-colored or under-colored, or decayed, 
or imperfectly formed, it is tossed aside among the 
worthless. If it have a rose-bug in it, or a worm, it is 
thrown among those infested with insects or vermin. 
The more faults he can find, the more pride he takes to 
his eyes for their discovery. It is not his business to 
nurse art, or to encourage merit. It is not his business, 
perhaps, to depress either, but he has an office like the 
English sparrow, which is to kill vermin. If he also 
drives away all the singing birds, it is not his affair. 
The blue-bird may flee his society, the robin may build 



66 Every-Day Topics. 

his nest otherwhere, the songs of the summer morning 
may cease; it matters not, so long as he can swab his 
greedy throat with a caterpillar, and save the tree on 
which he holds his perch, and in which he builds his 
nest. 

G. is a man of learning, whose simple effort in criti- 
cism is to prove to an author and the public how much 
more than the author he knows of the subject which he 
discusses. His criticisms are disquisitions, expositions, 
treatises. The book in hand is the occasion of his per- 
formance, not in any way the subject of it. It is simply 
a peg on which he hangs his clothes for an airing, or a 
graceful apology for calling attention to himself. In 
short, he uses the book in hand for the purpose of put- 
ting himself forward, not as a critic, but as an author ! 
Of the dreariness and essential indecency of this kind of 
criticism, we have left ourselves no room to speak. Its 
egotism and arrogance would be ludicrous, if they were 
not disgusting. 

H. regards criticism as an instrument of rewards and 
punishments. He pays his friends with it, and revenges 
himself upon those whom he chooses to consider his 
enemies. He approaches either task without the slight- 
est conscience. Every book, and every work of art, is 
handled without any regard to its merits, and only with 
relation to his own selfish interests and feelings. He 
" takes down" a man by assailing his productions, and 
lifts him up by praising them. In the whole range of 
what, by courtesy, is called " criticism," there is nothing 
more indecent than this. The only thing that makes it 
tolerable is, that its motive is too apparent to permit it 
to have any marked effect on public opinion. 

There are other classes of indecent critics and inde- 
cent criticism that we should be glad to notice, but the 
list is already long, and when we have fairly exhausted 



Criticism. 67 

it — when we have assigned to these classes all the critics 
and all the criticism that justly belong to them — what 
have we left ? It is a painful question to ask, and a hard 
one to answer. We certainly have not much left, but 
we have something. Let us be grateful, at least, to 
those men and women, scattered here and there over the 
country, who, with well-cultured brains and catholic 
hearts, make of criticism a careful, conscientious, dis- 
criminating task — who, with sympathy for all who are 
honestly trying to build up their country's literature and 
add to its treasures of native art, approach their work 
with kindness and candor, and so perform it as to educe 
the best that every worker can do. Such men and wo- 
men are public benefactors, the dignity and importance 
of whose office it would be hard to exaggerate. We need 
more of them — need them sadly. In the meantime, it 
is probable that incompetency, flippancy, arrogance, 
partisanship, ill-nature, and the pertinacious desire to 
attract attention, will go on with their indecent worl£, 
until criticism, which has now sunk to public contempt, 
will fall to dirtier depths beneath it. 

Conscience and Courtesy in Criticism. 

The lack of sound value in current literary criticism, 
both in this country and Europe, is notorious. It is so 
much the work of cliques and schools, or so much the 
office of men who have a chronic habit of finding fault, 
or so coarse in its personalities, or so incompetent in its 
judgments through haste and insufficient examination, 
that it is rarely instructive, either to the authors re- 
viewed or to the public. The average column of book 
notices in a daily paper is quite valueless, by necessity. 
The reviewer seems to forget that all the influence of 
the journal for which he works stands behind his hastily 



68 Every -Day Topics. 

written words, and that sensitive men and women are to 
be warmed or withered by them. Just a little more con- 
science, or a more candid consultation of such as he 
may have, would teach him that he has no moral right 
to give publicly an opinion of a book of which he knows 
nothing. In so small a matter as noticing a book before 
a competent examination of it, the chances are that he 
will mislead the public and do injustice to those who 
nearly always have some claim to the good opinion of 
the reading world. Publishers expect impossibilities of 
the daily press, and are largely responsible for what is 
known as the " book notice ; " but the daily press ought 
to declare its independence, and absolutely refuse to 
notice any book which has not been thoroughly read. 
The best and richest of the city press has already done 
this ; but the country press keeps up its column of book- 
notices every week, written by editors who never have 
time to look beyond the preface. 

In England, criticism is probably more the work of 
partisanship than it is here. The interests of parties in 
Church and State, and of cliques and schools of literary 
art, seem to determine everything. It appears to be per- 
fectly understood that everything written by the mem- 
bers of a certain clique will be condemned, and if possible 
killed, by the combined efforts of another clique, and 
•vice versa. Criticism is simply a mode of fighting. Mr. 
Blank, belonging to a certain literary clique, writes a 
volume of verses and prints it. He sends advance copies 
to his friends, who write their laudations of it, and com- 
municate them to sympathetic journals and magazines. 
So, when it is published, the critiques appear almost 
simultaneously, and the public is captured by the strata- 
gem. The condemnations come too late to kill the book, 
and the clever intriguers have their laugh over the result. 
It is not harsh to say that all criticism born of this spirit 



Criticism. 69 

is not only intrinsically valueless, but without conscience. 
The supreme wish to do right and to mete out simple 
justice to authorship is wanting. The praise is as value- 
less as the blame. 

The old and fierce personalities of English criticism, 
which so aroused the ire of Byron, and crushed the spirit 
of some of his less pugnacious contemporaries, have, in 
a measure, passed away ; but really nothing better in 
the grand result has taken their place. Men stand to- 
gether for mutual protection, fully aware that they have 
nothing to expect of justice and fair dealing by any other 
means. We do not know why it is that the ordinary 
courtesies of life are denied to authors more than to 
painters or sculptors or architects, except, perhaps, that 
painters and sculptors and architects are not judged by 
their own co-laborers in art. We presume that these, 
and that singers and actors would fare badly, if all the 
criticisms upon them were written by their professional 
brethren ; and this fact suggests the animus of those 
who criticise current literature. It seems impossible to 
get a candid and conscientious judgment of a literary 
man until after he is dead, and out of the way of all 
envyings and jealousies and competitions. It seems im- 
possible, also, until this event occurs, to separate a man 
from his works, and to judge them as they stand. There 
is no good reason, however, for the personal flings dealt 
out to authors, whose only sin has been a conscientious 
wish to deserve well of the public, except what is to be 
found in the meanest qualities of human nature. The 
lack of personal, gentlemanly courtesy in current criti- 
cism is a disgrace to the critical columns of our news- 
papers and magazines. 

The majority of those who write are sensitive to a high 
degree, and could not possibly be notable writers were 
they otherwise. They do the best they can, and that 



jo Every-Day Topics. 

which they do is the record of the highest civilization 
and culture of their country and period. They publish, 
trembling to think that what they publish is to be 
pounced upon and picked to pieces like prey. Their 
best thoughts and best work are not only treated with- 
out respect, but they find themselves maligned, cheap- 
ened, maliciously characterized, or summarily con- 
demned. All this they are obliged to bear in silence, 
or suffer the reputation of being thin-skinned and quarrel- 
some. There is no redress and no defence. They have 
published a book, in which they have incorporated the 
results of a life of labor and thought and suffering, with 
the hope of doing good, and of adding something to the 
literary wealth of their country ; and they have in so 
doing committed a sin which places them at the mercy 
of every man who holds a periodical press at his com- 
mand. It is said that the greatest literary woman living 
fled her country at the conclusion of that which is per- 
haps her greatest work, in order to be beyond the read- 
ing of the criticisms which the book would call forth. 
The woman was wise. It was not criticism that she 
feared : it was the malevolence and injustice of its spirit, 
to which she would not subject her sensibilities. 

There is but one atmosphere in which literature can 
truly thrive, viz. : that of kindness and encouragement. 
A criticism from which an author may learn anything to 
make him better, must be courteous and conscientious. 
All criticism of a different quality angers or discourages 
and disgusts him. Our literary men and women are our 
treasures and our glory. They are the fountain of our 
purest intellectual delights, and deserve to be treated as 
such. All that is good in them should have abundant 
recognition, and all that is bad should be pointed out in a 
spirit of such friendliness and courtesy that they should 
be glad to read it and grateful for it. If many of them 



Criticism. J I 

become morbid, sour, resentful, impatient or unpleasantly 
self-asserting, it ought to be remembered on their be- 
half that they have been stung by injustice, and badgered 
by malice, and made contemptuous by discourteous 
treatment. It is not unjust to say that all criticism which 
does not bear the front of personal courtesy and kind- 
ness and the warrant of a careful conscience is a curse 
to literature, and to the noble guild upon which we de- 
pend for its production. 






THE POPULAR LECTURE. 

Star-Lecturing. 

MR. PROCTOR does not need to look upward to find 
the star-depths. The phrase may fitly character- 
ize American society, which consists of stars and blank 
spaces. We run our politics on the starring system. A 
man becomes a star, and we make him President. The 
" red light of Mars " is the favorite color. Not states- 
manship, not personal character, not intellectual culture, 
not eminent knowledge, not anything and not any com- 
bination of things that constitute superlative fitness, fixes 
the American choice for the chief magistracy. The star 
which, for the moment, can attract the greatest number 
of eyes, becomes the lord of the heavens and the earth. 
Votes must be had at any sacrifice ; and votes can only 
be counted on for stars. Availability is the political 
watch-word, and such statesmanship as we get is that 
with which we manage to surround the star that so 
quickly cools and flickers in its new and alien atmos- 
phere. Political rewards do not go where they belong ; 
public trust is not reposed in the best men ; and so pol- 
itics degenerate, and second- and third-rate men are 
everywhere uppermost. The starring system in politics 
is a failure. It is bad for the country, it is bad for pol- 
itics ; it is a discouragement to personal and political 
worth : it is a nuisance. 



The Popular Lecture. 73 

The starring system in theatricals is even more ob- 
viously destructive to all that is worthy in the popular 
drama. We go to a theatre, not to witness a play, but 
to see Booth, or Joe Jefferson, or some other star. The 
opera is nothing without Kellogg, or Patti, or Nilsson, 
or some miraculous tenor who to-day is, and to-morrow 
is not. The orchestras — trained, laborious, patient, 
admirable — pass for nothing. The choruses are not 
thought so much of as an orchestrion would be. The 
great mass of singers and players who sustain the minor 
parts have no more consideration than puppets. What 
is the consequence ? The money is mainly absorbed by 
the stars, who shine the brighter in a sky of mediocrity 
or absolute inferiority. So long as the starring system 
prevails, mediocrity will be the rule. Stars must have 
space, to be seen ; and we have had for years, in the 
theatrical world, nothing but stars and spaces — the latter, 
wide. A first-class drama, well presented in every part, 
is not often witnessed in New York ; and for this fact 
the starring system is alone responsible. An actor now- 
adays can get no consideration except as a star, and, to 
succeed, he is often obliged to confine himself to a sin- 
gle play. 

How has the starring system worked upon the plat- 
form ? It has been tried pretty thoroughly for the last 
five years, and the results ought to be, and are apparent. 
Ten and fifteen years ago, a course of lectures consisted 
of eight or ten discourses on topics of popular interest, 
or social and political questions of public moment. 
They were prosperous, well attended, and profitable in 
many ways. Then came the star-fever. Men were sum- 
moned to the platform simply because they would draw, 
and not because the people expected instruction or in- 
spiration from them. A notoriety had only to rise, to be 
summoned at once to the platform. If he could lift a 
Vol. I.— 4 



74 Every -Day Topics. 

great many kegs of nails ; if he was successful as a show- 
man ; if he was a literary buffoon, and sufficiently expert 
in cheap orthography ; in short, if he had been anything, 
or had done anything, to make himself an object of curi- 
osity to the crowd, he was regarded as a star, and called 
at once into the lecture field, for the single purpose of 
swelling the receipts at the door. Of course the stars 
called for high prices, and under high prices the number 
of lectures given in a course was cut down. The peo- 
ple who came to bask in the blaze, finding too often only 
a twinkle, and sometimes only a fizzle that left an un- 
pleasant odor, became disgusted, and the best of them 
— the very men and women upon whom the whole lec- 
ture system relied for steady prosperity—left the lecture- 
room altogether. Still the starring system went on, with 
a new agency to push it, established by the lecture- 
bureaus. Men were invited to come from England, and 
promised great results. Some of these have been genu- 
ine accessions to the corps of good lecturers, while many 
have proved to be sorry failures. Many a famous name, 
"far-fetched and dear-bought," has shown upon the list 
for a season, never to be recalled and always to be re- 
membered with disappointment. The bureaus have 
pushed and puffed their pets — both imported and do- 
mestic — until lecture committees have ceased to believe 
in them altogether. 

And now, what is the condition of the platform ? In 
the large towns, where they have been able to get " the 
stars," it is difficult to get a first-rate audience together 
on any night, and still more difficult to maintain a steady, 
prosperous course of lectures. In the smaller towns, 
where want of funds has compelled them to dispense 
with the stars, the system was never more prosperous 
than it is to-day. In New England and New York, gen- 
erally, the towns with 20,000 inhabitants and upward 



The Popular Lecture. 75 

have difficulty in sustaining a course of lectures, while 
there are many towns of less than five thousand people 
that maintain a good course every winter, and make 
money by it. 

If there is anything in the lecture system worth saving, 
let us save it. Those who know what it used to be, will 
be glad to see it restored to its old position, and if they 
have studied its history, they will conclude with us, that 
the starring system must be stopped. The lecture-room 
must cease to be the show-room of fresh notorieties at 
high prices. Men must be called to lecture for the sim- 
ple reason that they have something to say. The courses 
must be lengthened, and made in themselves valuable. 
The pushing by interested bureaus of untried men must 
be ignored or resisted. Men must be called to teach 
because they can teach, and not because they can do 
something else. The lecture must cease to be regarded 
simply as an entertainment. Wherever it has been so 
regarded and so managed, the system has gone down, 
and wherever the stock lecturer has been sacrificed to 
the star, the audiences have gradually dwindled until it 
has become almost impossible to sustain a course of lec- 
tures at all. Stars have been so much in fashion that we 
have establishments now for the manufacture of fictitious 
reputations, and these establishments must go under. 
They always were an impertinence, and they have be- 
come a nuisance. The lecture is a necessity. Let us 
restore the institution to its old footing of direct friendly 
relations between the lecturers and the lyceum, and give 
no man access to the platform who does not come there 
in a legitimate way, and who is not held there because 
he has something valuable to say. No system can stand 
when its best and most reliable workers are pinched in 
their prices, that those may be overpaid who not only 
bring no strength to it, but weaken it in its finances 



7 6 Every -Lay Topics. 

and in its hold upon the respect and affection of the 
people. 

Triflers on the Platform. 

There was a time in the history of our popular " lec- 
ture system " when a lecture was a lecture. The men 
who appeared before the lyceums were men who had 
something to say. Grave discussions of important 
topics ; social, political, and literary essays ; instruc- 
tive addresses and spirited appeals — these made up a 
winter's course of popular lectures. Now, a lecture 
may be any string of nonsense that any literary moun- 
tebank can find an opportunity to utter. Artemus Ward 
" lectured ; " and he was right royally paid for acting the 
literary buffoon. He has had many imitators ; and the 
damage that he and they have inflicted upon the insti- 
tution of the lyceum is incalculable. The better class 
that once attended the lecture courses have been driven 
away in disgust, and among the remainder such a greed 
for inferior entertainments has been excited that lecture 
managers have become afraid to offer a first-class, old- 
fashioned course of lectures to the public patronage. 
Accordingly, one will find, upon nearly every list offered 
by the various committees and managers, the names of 
triflers and buffoons who are a constant disgrace to the 
lecturing guild, and a constantly degrading influence 
upon the public taste. Their popularity is usually ex- 
hausted by a single performance, but they rove from 
platform to platform, retailing their stale jokes, and do- 
ing their best and worst to destroy the institution to 
which they cling for a hearing and a living. 

This thing was done in better taste formerly. " Drol- 
lerists " and buffoons and "Yankee comedians" were 
in the habit of advertising themselves. They entered 
a town with no indorsement but their own, and no 



The Popular Lecture. *]J 

character but that which they assumed. They attracted 
a low crowd of men and boys as coarse and frivolous as 
themselves, and the better part of society never came 
in contact with them. A woman rarely entered their 
exhibitions, and a lady never; yet they were clever men 
with quite as much wit and common decency as some 
of the literary wags that are now commended to lecture 
committees by the bureaus, and presented by the com- 
mittees to a confiding public. 

. There are, and have been for years, men put forward 
as lecturers whose sole distinction was achieved by spell- 
ing the weakest wit in the worst way — men who never 
aimed at any result but a laugh, and who, if they could 
not secure this result by an effort in the line of decency, 
did not hesitate at any means, however low, to win the 
coveted response. If there is any difference between 
performers of this sort and negro minstrels, strolling 
" drollerists," who do not even claim to be respectable, 
we fail to detect it ; and it is high time that the mana- 
gers of our lecture courses had left them from their lists, 
and ceased to insult the public by the presumption that 
it can be interested in their silly utterances. 

It would be claimed, we suppose, by any one who 
should undertake to defend the employment of these 
men, that they draw large houses. Granted : they do 
this once, and perhaps do something to replenish the 
managerial exchequer ; but they invariably send away 
their audiences disappointed and disgusted. No thought- 
ful or sensible man can devote a whole evening to the 
poorest kind of nonsense without losing a little of his 
self-respect, and feeling that he has spent his money for 
that which does not satisfy. The reaction is always 
against the system, and in the long run the managers 
find themselves obliged to rely upon a lower and poorer 
set of patrons, who are not long in learning that even 



yS Every-Day Topics. 

they can be better suited by the coarse comedy of the 
theatre, and the dances and songs of the negro minstrel. 
Nothing has been permanently gained in any instance to 
the lyceum and lecture system by degrading the char- 
acter of the performances offered to the public. A tem- 
porary financial success consequent upon this policy is 
always followed by dissatisfaction and loss, and it ought 
to be. Professional jesters and triflers are professional 
nuisances, who ought not to be tolerated by any man of 
common sense interested in the elevation and purifica- 
tion of the public taste. 

But shall not lyceums and the audiences they gather 
have the privilege of laughing ? Certainly. Mr. Gough's 
audiences have no lack of opportunity to laugh, and 
there are others who have his faculty of exciting the 
mirthfulness of those who throng to hear them ; but 
Mr. Gough is a gentleman who is never low, and who is 
never without a good object. He is an earnest, Chris- 
tian man, whose whole life is a lesson of toil and self- 
sacrifice. Mr. Gough is not a trifler ; and the simple 
reason that he continues to draw full houses from year 
to year is, that he is not a trifler. Wit, humor, these are 
never out of order in a lecture, provided they season 
good thinking and assist manly purpose. Wit and 
humor are always good as condiments, but never as food. 
The stupidest book in the world is a book of jokes, and 
the stupidest man in the world is one who surrenders 
himself to the single purpose of making men laugh. It 
is a purpose that wholly demoralizes and degrades him, 
and makes him unfit to be a teacher of anything. The 
honor that has been shown to literary triflers upon the 
platform has had the worst effect upon the young. It 
has disseminated slang, and vitiated the taste of the im- 
pressible, and excited unworthy ambition and emula- 
tion. When our lyceums, on which we have been wont 



The Popular Lecture. 79 

to rely for good influences in literary matters, at last be- 
come agents of buffoonery and low literary entertain- 
ments, they dishonor their early record and the idea 
which gave them birth. Let them banish triflers from 
the platform, and go back to the plan which gave them 
their original prosperity and influence, and they will 
find no reason to complain of a lack of patronage, or the 
loss of interest on the part of the public in their enter- 
tainments. 






PERSONAL DANGERS. 
Moths in the Candle. 

EVERY moth learns for itself that the candle burns. 
Every night, while the candle lasts, the slaughter 
goes on, and leaves its wingless and dead around it. 
The light is beautiful, and warm, and attractive ; and, 
unscared by the dead, the foolish creatures rush into 
the flames, and drop, hopelessly singed, their little lives 
despoiled. 

It has been supposed that men have reason, and a 
moral sense. It has been supposed that they observe, 
draw conclusions, and learn by experience. Indeed, 
they have been in the habit of looking down upon the 
animal world as a group of inferior beings, and as sub- 
jects of commiseration on account of their defenceless- 
ness ; yet there is a large class of men, reproduced by 
every passing generation, that do exactly what the moths 
do, and die exactly as the moths die. They learn noth- 
ing by observation or experience. They draw no con- 
clusions, save those which are fatal to themselves. 
Around a certain class of brilliant temptations they 
gather, night after night, and with singed wings or life- 
less bodies they strew the ground around them. No 
instructions, no expostulations, no observation of ruin, 
no sense of duty, no remonstrances of conscience, have 
any effect upon them. If they were moths in fact, they 



Personal Dangers. 81 

could not be sillier or more obtuse. They are, indeed, 
so far under the domination of their animal natures that 
they act like animals, and sacrifice themselves in flames 
that the world's experience has shown to be fatal. 

A single passion, which need not be named — further 
than to say that, when hallowed by love and a legitimate 
gift of life to life, it is as pure as any passion of the soul 
— is one of the candles around which the human moths 
lie in myriads of disgusting deaths. If anything has 
been proved by the observation and experience of the 
world it is that licentiousness, and all illicit gratification 
of the passion involved in it, are killing sins against a 
man's own nature — that by it the wings are singed not 
only, but body and soul are degraded and spoiled. 
Out of all illicit indulgence come weakness, a perverted 
moral sense, degradation of character, gross beastliness, 
benumbed sensibilities, a disgusting life, and a disgrace- 
ful death. Before its baleful fire the sanctity of woman- 
hood fades away, the romance of life dies, and the beau- 
tiful world loses all its charm. The lives wrecked upon 
the rock of sensuality are strewn in every direction. 
Again and again, with endless repetition, young men 
yield to the song of the siren that beguiles them to their 
death. They learn nothing, they see nothing, they know 
nothing but their wild desire, and on they go to destruc- 
tion and the devil. 

Every young man who reads this article has two lives 
before him. He may choose either. He may throw 
himself away on a few illegitimate delights which cover 
his brow with shame in the presence of his mother, and 
become an old man before his time, with all the wine 
drained out of his life ; or he may grow up into a pure, 
strong manhood, held in healthy relation to all the joys 
that pertain to that high estate. He may be a beast in 
his heart, or he may have a wife whom he worships, chil- 
4* 



82 Every -Day Topics. 

dren whom he delights in, self-respect which enables 
him to meet unabashed the noblest woman, and an un- 
disputed place in good society. He may have a dirty 
imagination, or one that hates and spurns all impurity 
as both disgusting and poisonous. In brief, he may be 
a man, with a man's powers and immunities, or a sham 
of a man — a whited sepulchre — conscious that he car- 
ries with him his own dead bones, and all unclean- 
ness. It is a matter entirely of choice. He knows what 
one life is, and where it ends. He knows the essential 
quality and certain destiny of the other. The man who 
says he cannot control himself not only lies, but places 
his Maker in blame. He can control himself, and, if he 
does not, he is both a fool and a beast. The sense of 
security and purity and self-respect that come of con- 
tinence, entertained for a single day, is worth more 
than the illicit pleasures of a world for all time. The 
pure in heart see God in everything, and see him every- 
where, and they are supremely blest. 

Wine and strong drink form another candle in which 
millions of men have singed themselves and destroyed 
both body and soul. Here the signs of danger are more 
apparent than in the other form of sensuality, because 
there is less secrecy. The candle burns in open space, 
where all men can see it. Law sits behind, and sanc- 
tions its burning. It pays a princely revenue to the 
Government. Women flaunt their gauzes in it. Clergy- 
men sweep their robes through it. Respectability uses 
it to light its banquets. In many regions of this country 
it is a highly respectable candle. Yet, every year, sixty 
thousand persons in this country die of intemperance ; 
and when we think of the blasted lives that live in want 
and misery — of wives in despair, of loves bruised and 
blotted out, of children disgraced, of almshouses filled, 
of crimes committed through its influence, of industry 



Personal Dangers. 83 

extinguished, and of disease engendered — and remem- 
ber that this has been going on for thousands of years, 
wherever wine has been known, what are we to think of 
the men who still press into the fire ? Have they any 
more sense than the moths ? It is almost enough to 
shake a man's faith in immortality to learn that he be- 
longs to a race that manifests so little sense, and such 
hopeless recklessness. 

There is just one way of safety, and only one ; and a 
young man who stands at the beginning of his career 
can choose whether he will walk in it, or in the way of 
danger. There is a notion abroad among men that wine 
is good — that when properly used it has help in it — that 
in a certain way it is food, or a help in the digestion of 
food. We believe that no greater or more fatal hal- 
lucination ever possessed the world, and that none so 
great ever possessed it for so long a time. 

Wine is a medicine, and men would take no more of 
it than of any other medicine if it were not pleasant in 
its taste, and agreeable in its first effects. The men 
who drink it, drink it because they like it. The theories 
as to its healthfulness come afterward. The world cheats 
itself, and tries to cheat itself in this thing ; and the 
priests who prate of " using this world as not abusing 
it," and the chemists who claim a sort of nutritious prop- 
erty in alcohol which never adds to tissue (!) and the 
men who make a jest of water-drinking, all know per- 
fectly well that wine and strong drink always have done 
more harm than good in the world, and always will until 
that millennium comes, whose feet are constantly tripped 
from under it by the drunkards that lie prone in its path. 
The millennium with a grog-shop at every corner is just 
as impossible as security with a burglar at every win- 
dow, or in every room of the house. All men know that 
drink is a curse, yet young men sport around it as if 



84 Every- Day Topics. 

there were something very desirable in it, and sport until 
they are hopelessly singed, and then join the great, sad 
army which, with undiminished numbers, presses on to 
its certain death. 

We do not like to become an exhorter in these col- 
umns, but, if it were necessary, we would plead with 
young men upon weary knees to touch not the accursed 
thing. Total abstinence, now and forever, is the only 
guarantee in existence against a drunkard's life and 
death, and there is no good that can possibly come to 
a man by drinking. Keep out of the candle. It will 
always singe your wings, or destroy you. 

The Young in Great Cities. 

The world learns its lessons slowly. Much of the world 
does not learn its lessons at all. The young are every- 
where growing up amid the ruins of other lives, ap- 
parently without inquiring or caring for the reasons of 
the disasters to life, fortune and reputation that are 
happening, or have happened, everywhere around them. 
One man, with great trusts of money in his hands, be- 
trays the confidence of the public, becomes a hopeless 
defaulter, and blows his brains out. Another, led on by 
love of power and place, is degraded at last to a poor 
demagogue, without character or influence. Another, 
through a surrender of himself "to sensuality, becomes a 
disgusting beast, with heart and brain more foul than 
the nests of unclean birds. Another, by tasting and 
tasting and tasting of the wine-cup, becomes a drunk- 
ard at last, and dies in horrible delirium, or lives to be 
a curse to wife, children, and friends. There is an army 
of these poor wretches in every large city in the land 
dying daily, and daily reinforced. A young girl, lov- 
ing " not wisely, but too well," yields herself to a se- 



Personal Dangers. 85 

ducer who ruins and then forsakes her to a life of shame 
and a death of despair. Not one girl, but thousands of 
girls yearly, so that, though a great company of those 
whose robes are soiled beyond cleansing hide them- 
selves in the grave during every twelvemonth, another 
great company of the pure drop to their places, and 
keep filled to repletion the ranks of prostitution. Again 
and again, in instances beyond counting, are these 
tragedies repeated in the full presence of the rising gen- 
eration, and yet it seems to grow no wiser. Nothing 
has been more fully demonstrated than that the first 
steps of folly and sin are fraught with peril. Nothing 
has been better proved than that temperate drinking is 
always dangerous, and that excessive drinking is always 
ruinous. Nothing is better known than that a man can- 
not consort with lewd women for an hour without re- 
ceiving a taint that a whole life of repentance cannot 
wholly eradicate. Since time began have women been 
led astray by the same promises, the same pledges, the 
same empty rewards. If young men and young women 
could possibly learn wisdom, it would seem as if they 
might win it in a single day, by simply using their eyes 
and thinking upon what they see. Yet in this great city 
of New York, and in all the great cities of the country, 
young men and young women are all the time repeating 
the mistakes of those around them who are wrecked in 
character and fortune. The young man keeps his wine- 
bottle, and seeks resorts where deceived and ruined 
women lie in wait for prey, knowing perfectly well, if he 
knows anything, or has ever used fairly the reason with 
which Heaven has endowed him, that he is in the broad 
road to perdition — that there is before him a life of dis- 
gust and a death of horror. 

When the results of certain courses of conduct and 
certain indulgences are so well known as these to which 



86 Every -Day Topics. 

we allude, it seems strange that any can enter upon them. 
Every young man knows that if he never tastes a glass of 
alcoholic drink he will never become, or stand in danger 
of becoming, a drunkard. Every young man knows that 
if he preserves a chaste youth, and shuns the society 
of the lewd, he can carry to the woman whom he loves 
a self-respect which is invaluable, a past freely open to 
her questioning gaze, and the pure physical vitality 
which shall be the wealth of another generation. He 
knows that the rewards of chastity are ten thousand 
times greater than those of criminal indulgence. He 
knows that nothing is lost and everything is gained by a 
life of manly sobriety and self-denial. He knows all 
this, if he has had his eyes open, and has exercised his 
reason in even a small degree ; and yet he joins the in- 
fatuated multitude and goes straight to the devil. We 
know that we do not exaggerate when we say that New 
York has thousands of young men, with good mothers 
and pure sisters, who, if their lives should be uncovered, 
could never look those mothers and sisters in the face 
again. They are full of fears of exposure, and conscious 
of irreparable loss. Their lives are masked in a thou- 
sand ways. They live a daily lie. They are the vic- 
tims and slaves of vices which are just as certain to 
cripple or kill them, unless at once and forever for- 
saken, as they live. There are thousands of others 
who, now pure and good, will follow evil example un- 
warned by what they see, and within a year will be 
walking in the road that leads evermore downward. 

One tires of talking to fools, and falls back in sorrow 
that hell and destruction are never full — in sorrow that 
men cannot or will not learn that there is but one path 
to an honorable, peaceful, prosperous, and successful 
life, and that all others lead more or less directly to 
ruin. 



Personal Dangers. 87 



The Good Fellow. 

We wonder if" The Good Fellow" ever mistrusts his 
goodness, or realizes how selfish, how weak, how un- 
principled, and how bad a fellow he truly is. He never 
regards the consequences of his acts as they relate to 
others, and especially those of his family friends. Lit- 
tle fits of generosity toward them are supposed to atone 
for all his misdeeds, while he inflicts upon them the 
disgraces, inconveniences, and burdens which attend a 
selfishly dissolute life. The invitation of a friend, the 
taunts of good-natured boon companions, the tempta- 
tions of jolly fellowship, these are enough to overcome 
all his scruples, if he has any scruples, and to lead him 
to ignore all the possible results to those who love him 
best, and who must care for him in sickness and all the 
unhappy phases of his selfish life. 

The Good Fellow is notoriously careless of his family. 
Any outside friend can lead him whithersoever he will — 
into debauchery, idleness, vagabondage. He can ask 
a favor, and it is done. He can invite him into disgrace, 
and he goes. He can direct him into a job of dirty 
work, and he straightway undertakes it. He can tempt 
him into any indulgence which may suit his vicious 
whims, and, regardless of wife, mother, sister, who may 
be shortened in their resources so as legitimately to 
claim his protecting hand — regardless of honorable 
father and brother — he will spend his' money, waste his 
time, and make himself a subject of constant and pain- 
ful anxiety, or an unmitigated nuisance to those alone 
who care a straw for him. What pay does he receive 
for this shameful sacrifice ? The honor of being consid- 
ered a " Good Fellow," with a set of men who would 
not spend a cent for him if they should see him starving, 



88 Every -Day Topics, 

and who would laugh over his calamities. When he 
dies in the ditch, as he is most likely to die, they breathe 
a sigh over the swill they drink, and say, " After all, he 
was a Good Fellow." 

The feature of the Good Fellow's case which makes it 
well nigh hopeless, is, that he thinks he is a Good Fel- 
low. He thinks that his pliable disposition, his readi- 
ness to do other good fellows a service, and his jolly 
ways, atone for all his faults. His love of praise is fed 
by his companions, and thus his self complacency is 
nursed. Quite unaware that his good-fellowship is the 
result of his weakness ; quite unaware that his sacrifice 
of honor, and the honor and peace of his family for the 
sake of outside praise is the offspring of the most heart- 
less selfishness ; quite unaware that his disregard of the 
interests and feelings of those who are bound to him by 
the closest ties of blood, is the demonstration of his ut- 
terly unprincipled character ; he carries an unruffled, or 
a jovial front, while hearts bleed or break around him. 
Of all the scamps society knows, the traditional good 
fellow is the most despicable. A man who for the sake 
of his own selfish delights, or the sake of the praise of 
careless or unprincipled friends, makes his home a 
scene of anxiety and torture, and degrades and dis- 
graces all who are associated with him in his home life, 
is, whether he knows it or not, a brute. If a man can- 
not be loyal to his home, and to those who love him, 
then he cannot be loyal to anything that is good. There 
is something mean beyond description, in any man who 
cares more for anything in this world than the honor, 
the confidence, and love of his family. There is some- 
thing radically wrong in such a man, and the quicker and 
the more thoroughly he realizes it, in a humiliation 
which bends him to the earth in shame and confusion, 
the better for him. The traditional good fellow is a bad 



Personal Dangers. 89 

fellow from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. 
He is as weak as a baby, vain as a peacock, selfish as a 
pig, and as unprincipled as a thief. He has not one re- 
deeming trait upon which a reasonable self-respect can 
be built and braced. 

Give us the bad fellow, who stands by his personal 
and family honor, who sticks to his own, who does not 
"treat" his friends while his home is in need of the 
money he wastes, and who gives himself no indulgence 
of good fellowship at the expense of duty ! A man with 
whom the approving smile of a wife, or mother, or sister, 
does not weigh more than a thousand crazy bravos of 
boon companions, is just no man at all. 

Easy Lessons from H,ard Lives. 

No man ever died a more natural death than James 
Fisk, Jr., excepting, perhaps, Judas Iscariot. When the 
devil entered into the swine, and they ran violently down 
a steep place into the sea, it was only the going down 
that was violent. The death that came was natural 
enough. When a man pushes his personality so far to 
the front of aggressive and impertinent schemes of in- 
iquity as Fisk did, it is the most natural thing in the 
world for him to run against something that will hurt 
him, for dangers stand thick as malice and revenge can 
plant them in the path of godlessness and brutality. 
The captain of a piratical ship who undertakes, in addi- 
tion to the duties of his office, to serve as the figure-head 
of his own vessel, will receive, naturally, the first blow 
when she drives upon the rocks. Yet we join in the 
general sorrow that Mr. Fisk is dead, for it is possible 
that the lesson of his life may fail to be impressed upon 
Young America as it ought to be, in consequence of the 
sympathy awakened by the manner of his taking off. It 



90 Every-Day Topics. 

is not to be denied that a pretty universal execration of 
this man's memory has been saved through the bloody 
mercy of a murder. Yes, people talk of his fund of hu- 
mor, his geniality, his generosity, etc., etc. If this kind 
of talk is a source of satisfaction to anybody, of course 
he will indulge in it ; but Fisk certainly is none the bet- 
ter for having been killed. He was a bad man — bold 
and shameless and vulgar in his badness — with whom 
no gentleman could come in contact on terms of familiar 
intercourse without a sense of degradation. As for his 
geniality, that was as natural as his death. A cow that 
has spent the night in a neighbor's corn-field, and stands 
whisking her tail and ruminating in the morning sun, is 
one of the blandest and most genial creatures living. 
More than this, she does not care particularly who drinks 
the milk she has won ; and so we suppose that the cow 
too, is generous as well as genial ! 

Ah ! we forgot about Mr. Tweed. It was Mr. Tweed 
who was a great man a little while ago, was it not ? Mr. 
Tweed had power in his hands and patronage at his dis- 
posal, and had thousands to come at his beck and go at 
his bidding. His name was a tower of strength on a 
great many Boards of Directors. The Legislature elected 
by the State managed the State, and he managed the 
Legislature. He had confederates in iniquity ; but he 
was " The Boss," and his will was imperative and im- 
perial. Intrenched behind laws that were the product 
of corruption, ballots that could be increased or dimin- 
ished at will, and wealth that came to him in dark and 
mysterious ways, he dictated the administration of the 
government of the first city of the new world, and shaped 
the policy of the proudest State of the Union. His path 
was strewn with luxuries for himself and largess for his 
friends. He lived a right royal life, and the power-wor- 
shipping multitude and the vulgar seekers for place hung 



Personal Dangers. 91 

around him with abject and obsequious fawning. Where 
and what is Mr. Tweed now ? Where and what are his 
confreres ? All, from the Boss down to the meanest me- 
nial of the Ring, are writhing and shrivelling under the 
heat of a great popular indignation. Their deeds of 
darkness are uncovered, their shameless betrayals of 
trust are exposed, their power is passed hopelessly from 
their hands, and a great city, which once felt helpless in 
their grasp, has risen in its might and crowded them all 
to their utter overthrow. Every man who was a partici- 
pator in the power and plunder of the Ring shakes in 
his shoes wherever he walks, or stands, or skulks, and 
shows what it is to have a fearful looking-for of judgment. 
Good men everywhere breathe freer for this revolution, 
and the republic and the world have won new hope. 

The overthrow of these men — sudden, awful, complete 
— brings home to young men a much-needed lesson. A 
short time ago there were thousands of young men regard- 
ing with an eager, curious gaze the careers which have ter- 
minated and are terminating so tragically. It was a ques- 
tion in many minds, alas ! whether honesty was the best 
policy— whether virtue paid — whether, after all, that the 
preachers and the teachers might say, the rascality which 
received such magnificent rewards at the hands of the 
people was not the best investment for a young man 
cherishing a desire for wealth and power. Who can begin 
to measure the effects of these poisonous examples on 
American blood ? Let every man who wields a pen or has 
audience with the public do what he can to counteract 
them, by calling popular attention to the fact that these 
men have simply met the natural and inevitable fate of 
eminent rascality. Honesty is the best policy. Virtue 
does pay. Purity is profitable. Truthfulness and trust- 
worthiness are infinitely better than basely won gold. A 
good conscience is a choicer possession than power. 



92 Every-Day Topics. 

When a man sacrifices personal probity and honor, he 
loses everything that makes any earthly possession sweet. 
When these men were dazzling the multitude with their 
shows and splendors, they knew that the world they lived 
in was unsubstantial ; and we have no question that they 
expected and constantly dreaded the day of discovery 
and retribution. We do not believe that rascality ever 
paid them for a day, even when it seemed to be most 
triumphantly successful. 

The storm which has wrecked these men has cleared 
the sky. The air is purer, and has tone and inspiration 
in it. Honesty is at a premium again, and honest men 
may stand before rogues unabashed. The lesson of 
the day is one which teaches young men that lying and 
stealing and committing adultery are unprofitable sins, 
against which Nature as well as Revelation protests. It 
has not come too soon. We hope that it may not be 
learned too late. 

Prizes for Suicide. 

We have all heard of the testimony of the Boston 
physicians against the system of forcing pursued by the 
public schools of that city — of its tendency to produce 
nervous diseases, and even, in some instances, insanity 
itself. The testimony is so strong and positive, and so 
unanimous, that it must be accepted as true. Some 
weeks ago, at the commencement anniversary of a col- 
lege, not in Boston or New England, a long row of young 
men was called up to receive the prizes awarded to 
various forms of acquisition and scholarship. It was 
pleasant to see their shining faces, and to witness their 
triumph ; but the pleasure was spoiled by the patent 
fact that their victories had been won at the expense of 
physical vitality. Physically, there was not a well-de- 
veloped man among them ; and many of them were as 



Personal Dangers. 93 

thin as if they had just arisen from abed of sickness. 
After they had left the stage, a whole class was called 
on, to receive their diplomas. The improvement in the 
average physique was so great that there was a universal 
recognition of the fact by the audience ; and whispered 
comments upon it went around the assembly. The 
poorer scholars were undeniably the larger and healthier 
men. The victors had won a medal, and lost that which 
is of more value than the aggregate of all the gold medals 
ever struck. 

There is one lesson which teachers, of all men living, 
are the slowest to learn, viz. : that scholarship is not 
power, and that the ability to acquire is not the ability 
to do. The rewards of excellence in schools and colleges 
are, as a rule, meted out to those who have demonstrated 
their capacity for acquiring and cramming. The prac- 
tical world has ceased to expect much of its valedicto- 
rians and its prize-medal bearers. Those whose growth 
of power is slow, and whose vitality has been unimpaired 
by excessive study during the years of physical develop- 
ment, are the men who do, and who always have done, 
the work of the world. Thousands of educated men 
go through life with feeble health, and power impaired, 
and limited usefulness, in direct consequence of their 
early triumphs, or, rather, of the sacrifices by which 
those triumphs were won. 

We cannot but believe that prizes do more harm than 
good, and that it would be a blessing to the nation if 
they could be abolished in every school and college in 
the country. They are won invariably by those who 
need rather to be restrained than stimulated, and are 
rarely contended for by those whose sluggish natures 
alone require an extraordinary motive to exertion and 
industry. Their award is based upon the narrowest 
grounds. Their tendency is to convey a false idea of 



94 Every -Day Topics. 

manly excellence, and to discourage the development of 
the stronger and healthier forms of physical and mental 
life. The young man who goes to the work of his life 
with a firm and healthy frame, a pure heart, and the 
ability to use such knowledge as he possesses, is worth 
to himself, his friends, and the world, a thousand times 
more than the emaciated scholar whose stomach is the 
abode of dyspepsia and whose brain is a lumber-house 
of unused learning. If we have any prizes to give, let 
us give them to those young men of delicate organiza- 
tions and the power of easy acquisition who restrain 
their ambition to excel in scholarship, and build up for 
themselves a body fit to give their minds a comfortable 
dwelling-place and forcible and facile service. These 
would be prizes worth securing, and they would point to 
the highest form of manhood as their aim and end. 

The tendency in all these educational matters is to 
extremes. It is quite as much so in England as here. 
We have no sympathy with the aim which is fostered in 
some institutions of making athletes of the students. 
Base-ball matches, and rowing matches, and acrobatic 
feats are well enough for those who have no brains to 
cultivate, or who are not engaged in educating and stor- 
ing them ; but they are not the things for studious young 
men. The awful strain that they inflict upon the body 
draws all the nervous energy to the support of the mus- 
cular system, and kills the ability to study. More than 
all, they wound the vitality of every man who engages 
in them. We once heard an English clergyman say 
that every noted athlete of his (the clergyman's) class 
in the university was either dead or worse. Moderate 
play every day in the open air, limited hours of study 
in the day-time, pleasant social intercourse, unlimited 
sleep, good food, the education of power by its use in 
writing, speaking, and debating — these are what make 



Personal Dangers. 95 

men of symmetry, health, and usefulness. The forcing 
process, in whatever way applied, and to whatever set 
of powers, is a dangerous process. We make a great 
stir over the flogging of a refractory boy by a teacher. 
Whole communities are sometimes convulsed by what is 
regarded as a case of physical cruelty in a school, but 
the truth is that the ferule and the raw-hide are the mild- 
est instruments of cruelty in the hands of more teachers 
than can be counted. The boy who is crowded to do 
more than he ought to do in study, and so crowded that 
he is enfeebled, or takes on disease of the brain and 
nervous system at the first onset of sickness, is the vic- 
tim of the subtlest cruelty that can be practised upon 
him. 

We write strongly of these things because we feel 
strongly. We believe that there is a wrong practised 
upon the children and young men of the country that 
ought to be righted. We believe, too, that not only 
teachers but parents are blameworthy in this matter. 
It all comes of a false idea of education. To acquire 
what is written in books — in the quickest way and in the 
greatest quantity — this is education in the popular opin- 
ion. The enormous mistakes and fatal policies of which 
we complain all grow out of this error. Half of the 
schooling which we give those children who go to school 
would be better than the whole ; while the poor third, 
who do not go to school at all, would give employ- 
ment to the unused energies of those teachers whose 
time would be released to them by such a reduction of 
school hours. Six^ hours of daily imprisonment for a 
child is cruelty, without any reference to the tasks to 
which he is held during that period. 



PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. 

The American Gentleman of Leisure. 

DID the reader ever see a lost dog in a great city ? 
Not a dog recently lost, full of wild anxiety and 
restless pain and bewilderment, but one who had given 
up the search for a master in despair, and had become 
consciously a vagabond ? If so, he has seen an animal 
that has lost his self-respect, travelling in the gutters, 
slinking along by fences, making acquaintance with dirty 
boys, becoming a thorough coward, and losing every 
admirable characteristic of a dog. A cat is a cat even 
in vagabondage ; but a dog that does not belong to 
somebody is as hopeless a specimen of demoralization as 
can be found in the superior race among which he has 
sought in vain for his master. We know him at first 
sight, and he knows that we know him. The loss of his 
place in the world, and the loss of his objects of loyalty, 
personal and official, have taken the significance out of 
his life and the spirit out of him. He has become a dog 
of leisure. 

We do not know how it may be in transatlantic 
countries. It is quite possible that in Constantinople, 
where dogs are plenty and masters comparatively scarce, 
the canine vagabonds keep each other in countenance. 
There is a sort of self-respect among human thieves, if 
only enough of them get together. Where beggars are 



Personal Development. 97 

plenty, there are sometimes generated a sort of pro- 
fessional ambition, and a semblance, at least, of profes- 
sional pride and honor. Liquor-dealers form a society, 
publish a newspaper, call themselves "Wine Mer- 
chants," and make themselves believe that they are 
respectable. Stock gamblers in Wall Street, by sheer 
force of numbers in combination, make a business semi- 
respectable which never added a dollar of wealth to the 
country and never will, and which constantly places the 
business interests of the country in jeopardy. So it is 
possible that in Constantinople lost dogs maintain their 
self-respect, by community of feeling and a conscious- 
ness that they are neither exceptional nor eccentric. A 
dog's sense of vagabondage would seem, therefore, to 
depend much upon his atmosphere and circumstances. 
In New York he loses himself with his home ; in Con- 
stantinople he joins a community. 

The American man of leisure is a sort of lost dog. 
The people are so busy, they have so long associated 
personal importance with action and usefulness, that it 
is all a man's life is worth to drop out of active employ- 
ment. If a Vanderbilt should quietly release his hold 
of the vast railroad interests now in his hands, and should 
never more show his face in Wall Street, he would prac- 
tically shrink to a nonentity and cease to be of interest to 
anybody. It is undeniably true that there is nobody in 
America who has so hard a time as the man of leisure. 
The man who has nothing to do, and nobody to help him 
do nothing, may properly be counted among the unfortu- 
nate classes, without regard to the amount of wealth he 
possesses. This is, doubtless, the reason why so many 
who retire from a life of profitable labor come back, after 
a few months or years, to their old haunts and old pur- 
suits. They see that the moment they count themselves 
out of active life, they are counted by their old acquaint- 
Vol. I. -5 



98 Every-Day Topics. 

ances out of the world. They become mere loafers and 
hangers-on ; and a certain sense of vagabondage de- 
presses them. The climate is stimulating, time hangs 
heavy on their hands, business is exciting, business as- 
sociations are congenial and attractive ; and so they go 
back to their industries, never to leave them again till 
sickness or death or old age removes them from the 
theatre of their efforts. 

In Europe we know that the case is widely different. 
The number of men who live upon their estates — estates 
either won by trade or inherited from rich ancestors — is 
very large, while those who have small, fixed incomes, 
which they never undertake to increase, is larger still. 
The Englishman of leisure who cannot live at home on 
his income goes to the Continent, and seeks a place 
where his limited number of pounds per annum will give 
him genteel lodgings, with a life of idle leisure. In such 
a place he finds others in plenty who are as idle as he, 
and who have come there for the same reason that brings 
him. He finds it quite respectable to do nothing, and 
knows that his command of the means that give him 
leisure is the subject of envy on the part of the inhabi- 
tants. He eats, sleeps, reads, visits, writes letters, and 
kills time without any loss of self-respect, and without 
feeling the slightest attraction for busier life. Indeed, 
the tradesmen who are active around him are looked 
down upon as social inferiors, on account of the fact that 
they are under the necessity of work. Work is not a gen- 
teel thing to do, unless it be done in an office or profes- 
sion. Shop-keeping and labor of the hands are accounted 
vulgar. 

It seems impossible to conclude that the man of lei- 
sure can ever hold a desirable position where labor holds 
its legitimate position. We wish the American could 
have more leisure than he has. It would, in many re- 



Personal Development. 99 

spects, be well for society that men who have property 
enough, and ten times more than enough, should retire 
from active life to make place for others rather than go 
on accumulating gigantic fortunes which become curses 
to their owners and the community. After all, if idle- 
ness can oniy be made respectable and desirable by 
making labor vulgar, we trust that the American gentle- 
man of leisure will be as rare in the future as he has 
been in the past. 

We are glad, on the whole, that every American 
deems it essential to belong to somebody, to belong to 
something, to sustain some active relation to some in- 
dustry, or enterprise, or charity, to be counted in at 
some point among the useful forces of society. He is 
the better and the happier for it, and he helps to sustain 
the honor and self-respect of all those with whom labor 
is a constant necessity. 

The Improved American. 

Those Americans who have travelled over Europe dur- 
ing the past three or four years, expecting to be shocked 
by the vulgar display of their countrymen and country- 
women, and shamed by their gaucheries, have been 
pleasantly surprised to find their expectations unrealized. 
The American in Europe is now a quiet person, who 
minds his own business, takes quickly to the best habits 
of the country in which he finds himself, pays his bills, 
and commands an ordinary degree of respect. The vul- 
gar displays on the continent are now made mainly by 
men who were born there, and who, having made money 
in America, have returned to their early homes to show 
themselves and their wealth. These people do more to 
bring America into disrepute in Germany than all the 
native Americans have ever done ; and many of them, 



100 Every- Day Topics. 

we regret to say, have been sent there by the American 
Government as consuls and other governmental agents 
whose end in securing such appointments was simply 
that of commanding respect and position in communi- 
ties in which neither they nor their friends had ever had 
the slightest consideration. In railway carriages and dili- 
gences and steamers the American is always a courteous 
and well-behaved person, who bears with good-nature 
his full share of inconveniences, is heartily polite to la- 
dies of all nationalities, is kind to children, and helpful 
to all. He and his wife and daughters are invariably 
more tastefully and appropriately dressed than their 
English fellow-travellers, and at the table d'hote their 
manners are irreproachable, while very little that is 
pleasant can be said of the " table manners " of the sub- 
jects of the Kaiser William. In brief, the travelling 
American is greatly improved, and it is time that he 
were relieved of the lampoons of ill-natured correspond- 
ents and penny-a-liners, and placed where he belongs 
— among the best-bred of all those who are afloat upon 
the tide of travel. 

Again, those who have visited the various American 
watering-places during the past season, have not failed 
to remark that a great change has occurred among the 
summer pleasure seekers. At Newport and Saratoga the 
efforts at vulgar display, which were frequent during the 
last years of the war and the first of peace, have been 
entirely wanting. The vulgar love of the dance and the 
display which it involves, in all the popular places of re- 
sort, have almost entirely disappeared. With the most 
inspiring bands of music there is but little dancing ex- 
cept at the small family hotels in out-of-the-way places. 
Bathing, driving, walking, rowing, sailing, bowling, and 
croquet and picnic give a healthful tone to the seaside 
and inland places of recreation, and dress and dancing 



Personal Development. 101 

are at a discount. People speak of this change as if it 
were a fashion of the year, but in truth it is the evi- 
dence of an improvement in the national character and 
life. We are less children and more men and women 
than we were — finer and higher in our thoughts and 
tastes. 

There are other signs of improvement in the Ameri- 
can, and these relate mainly to the female side of the 
nation. The American woman has long been regarded 
by Europeans as the most beautiful woman in the world. 
This she is and has been for twenty-five years, without 
a doubt ; and as the circumstances of her life become 
easier, her labor less severe, and her education better, 
she will be more beautiful still. America never pos- 
sessed a more beautiful generation of women than she 
possesses to-day, and there is no doubt that the style of 
beauty is changing to a nobler type. The characteristic 
American woman of the present generation is larger than 
the characteristic American woman of the previous gen- 
eration. It comes of better food, better clothing, better 
sleep, more fresh air, and less of hard work to mothers 
during those periods when their vitality is all demanded 
for their motherly functions. We venture to say that 
the remark has been made by observers thousands of 
tinies during recent summers, at the various places of 
resort, that they had never seen so many large women 
together before. Indisputably they never had. 

The same fact of physical improvement is not so ap- 
parent among the men, and the cause is not too far off 
to be found. It need not be alluded to, however, until 
something has been said about the reasons of the su- 
perior beauty of American women over those of other 
Christian nationalities. The typical American is not, and 
never has been, a beer-drinking or a wine-drinking 
woman ; and to this fact mainly we attribute her wealth 



102 Every- Day Topics, 

of personal loveliness. In America it has always been 
considered vulgar for a woman to be fond of stimula- 
ting liquors in any form, and horribly disgraceful for 
her to drink them habitually. As a rule, all over the 
country, the American woman drinks nothing stronger 
than the decoctions of the tea-table, and those she is 
learning to shun. She is a being raised to maturity 
without a stimulant, and as this is the singular, distin- 
guishing fact in her history, when we compare her with 
the woman of other nations, it is no more than fair to 
claim that it has much to do with her pre-eminence of 
physical beauty. 

This will appear still more forcibly to be the case 
when we find that physical improvement in the Ameri- 
can man is not so evident as it appears to be in his wife 
and sister. The American man is better housed, better 
clothed, and better fed than formerly, but his habits are 
not better. Our students are done with bran-bread and 
scant sleep, and are winning muscle and health in the 
gymnasium ; but they smoke too much. The young 
men in business everywhere understand the laws of 
health and development better than the generation that 
preceded them, but they drink too much. This whole 
business of drinking is dwarfing the American man. It 
stupefies the brain and swells the bulk of the English- 
man and the German, but it frets and rasps and whittles 
down the already over-stimulated American. The facts 
recently published concerning the enormous consumption 
of liquor in America are enough to account for the dis- 
parity between the degrees of physical improvement 
that have been achieved respectively by the two sexes. 
The young American who drinks habitually, or who, by 
drinking occasionally, puts himself in danger of drinking 
habitually, sins against his own body beyond the power 
of nature to forgive. He stunts his own growth to manly 



Personal Development. 103 

stature, and spoils himself for becoming the father of 
manly men and womanly women. The improved Ameri- 
can will not drink, and he will not be improved until he 
stops drinking. 

Room at the Top. 

To the young men annually making their entrance 
upon active life, with great ambitions, conscious capaci- 
ties and high hopes, the prospect is, in ninety-nine cases 
in a hundred, most perplexing. They see every avenue 
to prosperity thronged with their superiors in experience, 
in social advantages, and in the possession of all the 
elements and conditions of success. Every post is oc- 
cupied, every office filled, every path crowded. Where 
shall they find room ? It is related of Mr. Webster that 
when a young lawyer suggested to him the profession to 
which he had devoted himself was overcrowded, the 
great man replied : li Young man, there is always room 
enough at the top." Never was a wiser or more sugges- 
tive word said. There undoubtedly is always room 
enough where excellence lives. Mr. Webster was not 
troubled for lack of room. Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun 
were never crowded. Mr. Evarts, Mr. Cushing, and 
Mr. O'Conor have plenty of space around them. Mr. 
Beecher, Dr. Storrs, Dr. Hall, Mr. Phillips Brooks, 
would never know, in their personal experience, that it 
was hard to obtain a desirable ministerial charge. The 
profession is not crowded where they are. Dr. Brown- 
Sequard, Dr. Willard Parker, Dr. Hammond, are not 
troubled for space for their elbows. When Nelaton died 
in Paris, he died like Moses on a mountain. When Von 
Graefe died in Berlin, he had no neighbor at his altitude. 

It is well, first, that all young men remember that 
nothing will do them so much injury as quick and easy 
success, and that nothing will do them so much good as 



104 Every -Day Topics. 

a struggle which teaches them exactly what there is in 
them; educates them gradually to its use, instructs them 
in personal economy, drills them into a patient and per- 
sistent habit of work, and keeps them at the foot of the 
ladder until they become strong enough to hold every step 
they are enabled to gain. The first years of every man's 
business or professional life are years of education. They 
are intended to be, in the order of nature and Provi- 
dence. Doors do not open to a man until he is prepared 
to enter them. The man without a wedding garment 
may get in surreptitiously, but he immediately goes out 
with a flea in his ear. We think it is the experience of 
most successful men who have watched the course of 
their lives in retrospect, that whenever they have ar- 
rived at a point where they were thoroughly prepared to 
go up higher, the door to a higher place has swung back 
of itself, and they have heard the call to enter. The old 
die, or voluntarily retire for rest. The best men who 
stand ready to take their places will succeed to their 
position and its honors and emoluments. 

The young men will say that only a few can reach the 
top. That is true, but it is also true that the farther 
from the bottom one goes, the more scattering the neigh- 
borhood. One can fancy, for illustration, that every 
profession and every calling is pyramidal in its living 
constituency, and that while only one man is at the top, 
there are several tiers of men below him who have plenty 
of elbow-room, and that it is only at the base that men 
are so thick that they pick the meat out of one another's 
teeth to keep themselves from starving. If a man has 
no power to get out of the rabble at the bottom, then he 
is self-convicted of having chosen a calling or profession 
to whose duties he has no adaptation. 

The grand mistake that young men make, during the 
first ten years of their business and professional life, is 



Personal Development. 105 

in idly waiting for their chance. They seem to forget, 
or they do not know, that during those ten years they 
enjoy the only leisure they will ever have. After ten 
years, in the natural course of things, they will be ab- 
sorbingly busy. There will then be no time for reading, 
culture, and study. If they do not become thoroughly 
grounded in the principles and practical details of their 
profession during those years ; if they do not store their 
minds with useful knowledge ; if they do not pursue 
habits of reading and observation, and social intercourse, 
which result in culture, the question whether they will 
ever rise to occupy a place where there is room enough 
for them will be decided in the negative. The young 
physicians and young lawyers who sit idly in their offices, 
and smoke and lounge away the time " waiting for 
something to turn up," are by that course fastening 
themselves for life to the lower stratum, where their 
struggle for a bare livelihood is to be perpetual. The 
first ten years are golden years, that should be filled with 
systematic reading and observation. Everything that 
tends to professional and personal excellence should be 
an object of daily pursuit. To such men the doors of 
success open of themselves at last. Work seeks the 
best hands as naturally as water runs down hill ; and it 
never seeks the hands of a trifler, or of one whose only 
recommendation for work is that he needs it. Young 
men do not know very much, any way, and the time al- 
ways comes to those who become worthy, when they 
look back with wonder upon their early good opinion of 
their acquirements and themselves. 

There is another point that ought not to be overlooked 
in the treatment of this subject. Young men look 
about them and see a great measure of worldly success 
awarded to men without principle. They see the trick- 
ster crowned with public honors ; they see the swindler 
5* / 



io6 Every -Day Topics. 

rolling in wealth; they see the sharp man, the overreach- 
ing man, the unprincipled man, the liar, the demagogue, 
the time-server, the trimmer, the scoundrel who cun- 
ningly manages, though constantly disobeying moral 
law and trampling upon social courtesy to keep himself 
out of the clutches of the legal police, carrying off the 
prizes of wealth and place. All this is a demoralizing 
puzzle and a fearful temptation ; and multitudes of 
young men are not strong enough to stand before it. 
They ought to understand that in this wicked world 
there is a great deal of room where there is integrity. 
Great trusts may be sought by scoundrels, but great 
trusts never seek them ; and perfect integrity is at a pre- 
mium even among scoundrels. There are some trusts 
that they will never confer on each other. There are 
occasions when they need the services of true men, and 
they do not find them in shoals and in the mud, but 
alone and in pure water. 

In the realm of eminent acquirements and eminent 
integrity there is always room enough. Let no young 
man of industry and perfect honesty despair because his 
profession or calling is crowded. Let him always re- 
member that there is room enough at the top, and that 
the question whether he is ever to reach the top, or rise 
above the crowd at the base of the pyramid, will be de- 
cided by the way in which he improves the first ten 
years of his active life in securing to himself a thorough 
knowledge of his profession, and a sound moral and in- 
tellectual culture. 

The Next Duty. 

This is an epoch of elevators. We do not climb to 
our rooms in the hotel ; we ride. We do not reach the 
upper stories of Stewart's by slow and patient steps ; we 
are lifted there. The Simplon is crossed by a railroad, 



Personal Development. 107 

and steam has usurped the place of the alpenstock on 
the Righi. The climb which used to give us health on 
Mount Holyoke, and a beautiful prospect, with the re- 
ward of rest, is now purchased for twenty-five cents of 
a stationary engine. 

If our efforts to get our bodies into the air by machin- 
ery were not imitated in our efforts to get our lives up 
in the same way, we might not find much fault with 
them ; but, in truth, the tendency everywhere is to get 
up in the world without climbing. Yearnings after the 
Infinite are in the fashion. Aspirations for eminence — 
even ambitions for usefulness — are altogether in advance 
of the willingness for the necessary preliminary disci- 
pline and work. The amount of vaporing among young 
men and young women, who desire to do something 
which somebody else is doing — something far in advance 
of their present powers — is fearful and most lamentable. 
They are not willing to climb the stairway ; they must 
go up in an elevator. They are not willing to scale the 
rocks in a walk of weary hours, under a broiling sun ; 
they would go up in a car with an umbrella over their 
heads. They are unable, or unwilling, to recognize the 
fact that, in order to do that very beautiful thing which 
some other man is doing, they must go slowly through 
the discipline, through the maturing processes of time, 
through the patient work, which have made him what he 
is, and fitted him for his sphere of life and labor. In 
short, they are not willing to do their next duty, and 
take what comes of it. 

No man now standing on an eminence of influence 
and power, and doing great work, has arrived at his po- 
sition by going up in an elevator. He took the stair- 
way, step by step. He climbed the rocks, often with 
bleeding hands. He prepared himself by the work of 
climbing for the work he is doino;. He never accom- 



1 8 Every - Day Top ics. 

plished an inch of his elevation by standing at the foot 
of the stairs with his mouth open, and longing. There 
is no "royal road" to anything good — not even to 
wealth. Money that has not been paid for in life is not 
wealth. It goes as it comes. There is no element of 
permanence in it. The man who reaches his money in 
an elevator does not know how to enjoy it ; so it is not 
wealth to him. To get a high position without climbing 
to it, to win wealth without earning it, to do fine work 
without the discipline necessary to its performance, to 
be famous, or useful, or ornamental without preliminary 
cost, seems to be the universal desire of the young. The 
children would begin where the fathers leave off. 

What, exactly, is the secret of true success in life ? It 
is to do, without flinching, and with utter faithfulness, 
the duty that stands next to one. When a man has 
mastered the duties around him, he is ready for those 
of a higher grade, and he takes naturally one step up- 
ward. When he has mastered the duties at the new 
grade, he goes on climbing. There are no surprises to 
the man who arrives at eminence legitimately. It is 
entirely natural that he should be there, and he is as 
much at home there, and as little elated, as when he was 
working patiently at the foot of the stairs. There are 
heights above him, and he remains humble and simple. 

Preachments are of little avail, perhaps ; but when 
one comes into contact with so many men and women 
who put aspiration in the place of perspiration, and 
yearning for earning, and longing for labor, he is 
tempted to say to them: " Stop looking up, and look 
around you ! Do the work that first comes to your 
hands, and do it well. Take no upward step until you 
come to it naturally, and have won the power to hold it. 
The top, in this little world, is not so very high, and 
patient climbing will bring you to it ere you are aware." 



PREACHERS AND PREACHING. 

The Power of the Affirmative. 

THE power of positive ideas and the power of the 
■*- positive affirmation and promulgation of them 
move the world. Breath is wasted in nothing more 
lavishly than in negations and denials. It is not neces- 
sary for truth to worry itself, even if a lie can run a 
league while it is putting on its boots. Let it run, and 
get out of breath, and get out of the way. A man who 
spends his days in arresting and knocking down lies 
and liars will have no time left for speaking the truth. 
There is nothing more damaging to a man's reputation 
than his admission that it needs defending when at- 
tacked. Great sensitiveness to assault, on the part of 
any cause, is an unmistakable sign of weakness. A 
strong man and a strong cause need only to live an af- 
firmative life, devoting no attention whatever to ene- 
mies, to win their way, and to trample beneath their feet 
all* the obstacles that malice, or jealousy, or selfishness 
throws before them. The man who can say strongly and 
earnestly " I believe," has not only a vital and valuable 
possession, but he has a permanent source of inspiration 
within himself, and a permanent influence over others. 
The man who responds : <( I do not believe what you 
believe," or "I deny what you believe," has no posses- 
sion, and no influence except a personal one. 



no Every -Day Topics. 

In nothing is this principle better exemplified and 
illustrated than in the strifes of political parties. The 
party that adopts a group of positive ideas, and shapes 
a positive policy upon them, and boldly and consistently 
affirms and promulgates both ideas and policy, has 
an immense advantage over one which undertakes to 
operate upon a capital of negations. The history of 
American politics is full of confirmations of this truth. 
No party has ever had more than a temporary success 
that based its action simply on a denial of a set of posi- 
tive ideas held by its opponent. The popular mind de- 
mands something positive — something that really pos- 
sesses breath and being — to which it may yield its 
allegiance. There is no vitalizing and organic power in 
simple opposition and negation. Earnest, straightfor- 
ward affirmation has a power in itself, independent of 
what it affirms, greater than negation when associated 
with all the influences it can engage. 

The Author of Christianity understood this matter. 
His system of religion was to be preached, proclaimed, 
promulgated. Its friends were not to win their triumphs 
by denying the denials of infidelity, but by persistently 
affirming, explaining and applying the truth. With this 
system of truth in his hands — so pure, so beneficent, so 
far-reaching in its results upon human character, happi- 
ness, and destiny — the Christian teacher commands the 
position. Infidelity and denial can make no permanent 
headway against faith, unless faith stop to bandy words 
with them. That is precisely what they would like, and 
what would give them an importance and an influence 
which they can win in no other way. Why should an 
impregnable fortress exchange shots with a passing 
schooner? Silence would be a better defence than a 
salvo, and deprive the schooner of the privilege of being 
reported in the newspapers. The world whirls toward 



Preachers and Preaching. 1 1 1 



the sun, and never stops to parley with the east wind. 
The great river, checked by a dam, quietly piles up its 
waters, buries the dam, and, rolling over it, grasps the 
occasion for a new exhibition of its positive power and 
beauty. The rip-rap shuts an ocean door, but the ocean 
has a million doors through which it may pour its tides. 
Stopping to deny denials is as profitless as stopping to 
deny truths. It is consenting to leave an affirmative for 
a negative position, which is a removal to the weak side. 
So a man who has really anything positive in him has 
nothing to do but persistently to work and live it out. 
If he is a politician or a statesman, or a reformer or a 
literary man, he can make himself felt most as a power 
in the world, and be securest of ultimate recognition, by 
living a boldly affirmative life, and doing thoroughly 
that which it is in him to do, regardless of assault, de- 
traction and misconstruction. The enemies of any man 
who suffers himself to be annoyed by them will be cer- 
tain to keep him busy. The world has never discovered 
anything nutritious in a negation, and the men of faith 
and conviction will always find a multitude eager for 
the food they bear. Men will continue to drink from 
the brooks and refuse to eat the stones that obstruct 
them. Even error itself in an affirmative form is a thou- 
sand times more powerful than when it appears as a de- 
nial of a truth. 

Modern Preaching. 

We cannot more forcibly illustrate the difference be- 
tween ancient and modern preaching than by imagining 
the translation of a preacher of fifty years ago to a mod- 
ern pulpit. The dry and formal essays, the long homi- 
lies, the dogmatism and controversy that then formed 
the staple of public religious teaching, would be to-day 



112 Every- Day Topics. 

altogether unsatisfactory in the hearing, and unfruitful 
in the result. Experience has proved that Christians 
are more rarely made by arguments addressed to the 
reason than by motives addressed to the heart. The 
reliable and satisfactory evidences of Christianity are 
found less in the sacred records than in its transforma- 
tions of character and its inspirations of life. Though a 
thousand Strausses and Renans were at work endeavor- 
ing to undermine the historical basis of the Christian 
scheme, their efforts would prove nugatory when met 
by the practical results of that scheme in reforming 
character, in substituting benevolence for selfishness as 
the dominant motive in human commerce, in sustain- 
ing the heart in trial, in comforting it in sickness, and 
supporting it in dissolution. With the results of Chris- 
tianity before him and in him, the Christian may con- 
fidently say to all his enemies : " If a lie can do all this, 
then a lie is better than all your truth, for your truth 
does not pretend to do it ; and if our lie is better in 
every possible legitimate result than your truth, then 
your truth is proved to be a lie, and our lie is the truth." 
The argument is not only fair, but it is unanswerable, 
and saves a world of trouble. Of all " short methods " 
with infidelity, this is the shortest. It is like the argu- 
ment of design in proving the existence of an intelligent 
first cause. The man who ignores or denies it is either 
incapable of reason or viciously perverse. 

So the modern preacher preaches more and argues 
less. He declares", promulgates, explains, advises, ex- 
horts, appeals. He does more than this. Instead of re- 
garding Christianity solely as a scheme of belief and 
faith, and thus becoming the narrow expounder of a 
creed, he broadens into a critic and cultivator of human 
motive and character. We do not assert that modern 
preaching is entirely released from its old narrowness. 



Preachers and Preaching. 113 

There are still too many who heat over the old broth, 
and ladle it out in the old way which they learned in the 
seminary. This " preaching of Jesus Christ" is still to 
multitudes the preaching of a scheme of religion, the ex- 
planation of a plan, the promulgation of dogmata. But 
these men, except in the most ignorant and unprogres- 
sive communities, preach to empty walls or contemptu- 
ous audiences. The man who preaches Christ the most 
effectively and acceptably, in these days, is he who tries 
all motive and character and life by the divine standard, 
who applies the divine life to the every-day life of the 
world, and whose grand endeavor is not so much to save 
men as to make them worth saving. He denounces 
wrong in public and private life ; he exposes and re- 
proves the sins of society ; he applies and urges the mo- 
tives to purity, sobriety, honesty, charity, and good 
neighborhood ; he shows men to themselves, and then 
shows them the mode by which they may correct them- 
selves. In all this he meets with wonderful acceptance, 
and, most frequently, in direct proportion to his faith- 
fulness. This, after all, is the kind of talk men are will- 
ing to hear, even if it condemns them. All truth re- 
lating to the faults of character and life, if presented in 
a Christian spirit, by a man who assumes nothing for 
himself, and who never loses sight of his own weakness 
and his brotherhood with the erring masses whom he 
addresses, is received gladly. 

The world has come to the comprehension of the fact 
that, after all that may be said of dogmatic Christianity, 
character is the final result at which its author aimed. 
The aim and end of Christianity is to make men better, 
and in making them better to secure their safety and 
happiness in this world and the world to come. The 
Christianity which narrows the sympathies of a man, 
and binds him to his sect, which makes the Christian 



114 Every -Day Topics. 

name of smaller significance to him than the name of 
his party, which thinks more of soundness of belief 
than soundness of character, is the meanest kind of 
Christianity, and belongs to the old and outgrown time. 
It savors of schools and books and tradition. The hu- 
man element in it predominates over the divine. The 
typical modern preacher mingles with men. He goes 
into the world of business — into its cares, its trials, its 
great temptations, its overreachings, its dangers and 
disasters — and learns the character and needs of the 
men he meets there. He sits in the humble dwelling of 
the laborer, and reads the wants of the humanity he 
finds there. In workshops, in social assemblies, in 
schools, among men, women and children, wherever 
they live, or meet for labor or for pleasure, his presence 
is familiar. Human life is the book he reads prepara- 
tory to his pulpit labors, and without the faithful read- 
ing of this book he has no fitting preparation for his 
task. No matter how much a oreacher knows of the 
divine life, if he has not an equal knowledge of the hu- 
man, his message will be a barren one. 

The great mistake of the modern preacher is in not 
keeping up with the secular thought of his time. It is 
quite as essential to the preacher to know what men are 
thinking about as what they are doing. Comparatively 
few preachers are at home in the current progress of 
science, and too many of them look coldly upon it, as 
upon something necessarily inimical to the system of 
religion to which they have committed their lives. 
They apparently forget that their indifference or oppo- 
sition wins only contempt for themselves and their 
scheme. There are few laymen so devoid of common 
sense as to be unable to see that any scheme which is 
afraid of scientific truth — nay, any scheme which does 
not gladly welcome every new realm won to the grand 



Preachers and Preaching. 115 

domain of human knowledge — is unworthy of confi- 
dence. An unreasoning loyalty to old interpretations of 
revealed truth is a weakness of the pulpit that becomes 
practically a reproach to Christianity itself. If the God 
of nature undeniably disputes the God of revelation, as 
the preacher interprets him, let him give up his inter- 
pretation gladly, and receive the correction as from the 
mouth of God himself. It is only in this way that he 
can maintain his hold upon hrs age, and win honor to 
the religion he tries to serve. All truth is divine, and 
the mode of utterance makes it neither more so nor less. 
A man who denies a truth spoken to him by the God of 
nature is as truly and culpably an infidel as if he were 
to deny a plainly spoken truth of the Bible. 

Fewer Sermons and More Service. 

There is, without any question, a good deal of " fool- 
ishness of preaching," and a good deal of preaching 
which is " foolishness " by its quantity alone. Preach- 
ers are aware of it, pretty generally, and the people are 
slowly learning it. Indeed, a reform is begun, and is 
making headway — a reform which all the intelligent 
friends of Christian progress will help by ready word 
and hand. There is no man living, engaged in literary 
work, who does not know that a minister who writes, or 
in any way thoroughly prepares, two sermons a week, 
can have no time for any other work whatsoever. Pas- 
toral duty is out of the question with any man who per- 
forms this task month after month. A man who faith- 
fully executes this amount of literary labor, and then, 
on Sunday, preaches his two sermons and performs the 
other services which are connected with public worship, 
does all that the strongest constitution can endure. 
When it is undertaken to add to this work universal 



n6 Every- Day Topics. 

pastoral visitation, attendance at funerals, weddings, 
and all sorts of meetings during the week, and the care 
of personal and family affairs, a case of cruelty is estab- 
lished a great many times worse than any that engages 
the sympathies and demands the interference of the 
humane Mr. Bergh. To do all this work without a fatal 
break-down before middle age, requires an amount of 
vitality and a strength of constitution which few men in 
any calling possess, and which a youth devoted to study 
is pretty certain to damage or destroy. 

The country is full of ministerial wrecks, three -fourths 
of which were stranded early upon the sands of exhaus- 
tion. There are many towns in America in which there 
are now living more preachers out of business — and 
hopelessly out — than the number engaged in active life 
and employment. We think that a census of New York 
city would give us some startling facts connected with 
this matter, though it is into country towns, where the 
cost of living is small, that the exhausted preachers 
drift at last. We know a little New England town in 
which there are now residing more than twenty ex- 
clergymen — a number four times as large as that of the 
active pulpits and churches in the town. The early 
studies of these men, and the excessive service demand- 
ed of them, have reduced the majority of them to the 
comparatively useless persons they are. 

In speaking of the exhausting nature of the task of 
writing two sermons a week, we have made no distinc- 
tions. The average preacher needs as much time for, 
and expends as much hard work on, the preparation of 
a single sermon as Mr. Beecher does on two. To de- 
mand two sermons of this man — the average man — that 
shall be even tolerably well prepared, is to demand 
what is not in him to give. He works in constant dis- 
tress — conscious all the time that under the pressure 



Preachers and Preaching. 117 

that is upon him he can never do his best, and fearful 
always that his power over his flock is passing with the 
weekly drivel of commonplace which he is obliged to 
breathe or bellow into their drowsy ears. Yet the aver- 
age preacher manages in some way to preach two ser- 
mons a week, to attend any number of meetings, to visit 
every family of his charge twice a year, to officiate at 
weddings and funerals, to rear his children, and to do 
this until he breaks down or is dismissed, and, with his 
old stock of sermons on hand as capital, begins a new 
life in another parish, from which in due time he will 
pass to another. 

Now, if such work as this were necessary, or even ex- 
traordinarily useful, there would be some apology for it, 
and some justification of it ; but it is neither. If it is 
impossible for the average minister to prepare compe- 
tently two sermons a week, it is just as impossible for 
the average parishioner to receive and remember and 
appropriate two sermons in a day. No man of ordinary 
observation and experience — no man who has carefully 
observed liis own mental processes in the reception and 
appropriation of truth — has failed to notice that the di- 
gestive powers of the mind are limited. The man who 
hears and appropriates a good sermon in the morning 
has no room in him for another sermon in the afternoon 
or evening. To hear three sermons in a day is always 
to confuse and often to destroy the impression left by 
each. Every discourse that a man hears after his first 
strong impression and his first hungry reception is a dis- 
turbing, distracting, and depressing force. The second 
sermon on a single Sabbath makes every man poorer who 
heard and was interested in the first, and not richer ; 
while both sermons were damaged in their quality by the 
simple fact that the time devoted to both should have 
been bestowed on one alone. We know of no walk of 



1 1 8 Every -Day Topics. 

life in which there is such a profligacy of resources as in 
this — none in which such unreasonable demands are 
' made upon public servants with such a damaging reac- 
tion upon those who make them. The preachers are 
killed outright, or permanently damaged in their power, 
by a process that results in the impoverishment of the 
very men who demand its following. 

The truth is, that half of this fondness for preaching 
that we see in many parishes arises from hunger for 
some sort of intellectual entertainment, and even for 
some sort of amusement. The hearers go away from 
their Sunday sermons and talk about them as coolly as 
if they had only been to a show. They gorge themselves 
— many of them preferring three sermons to two. Then 
they go into their weekly work, and do not look into a 
book from Monday morning until Saturday night. The 
Sunday sermons are all the amusement and intellectual 
food and stimulus they get. They fancy they are very 
religious, and that their delight in endless preaching is 
an evidence of their piety, when in truth it is an evidence 
mainly of social and intellectual starvation, and of a most 
inconsiderate or cruel demand upon the vitality of the 
poor man who does their preaching. 

Well, the world has been preached to pretty thor- 
oughly for the last hundred years. The advocates of 
many sermons have had it all their own way, and we 
should like to ask them whether the results of preaching 
— pure and simple — satisfy them ? What preacher is 
there who has not been a thousand times discouraged by 
the result of his labors in the pulpit ? How small are 
the encroachments made upon the world by it ! With 
all our preaching in America — and we have had more 
of it, and better, than has been enjoyed in any other 
country — we should, but for the prevalence and power 
of Sunday-schools, have drifted half-way back to bar- 



I 



Preachers and Preaching. 119 

barism by this time. Preaching to a great population 
of lazy adults, who do nothing for themselves or the 
children, and nothing for the Church but grumblingly 
to pay their pew-rent, and nothing for the world around 
them, is about as thriftless a business as any man can 
engage in. Let us saw wood and eat pork and beans, 
for to-morrow we die. 

And now let us state our conclusions, for this article, 
which we intended should be brief, is opening into a 
long discourse. 

First. — There is no way to improve the character and 
quality of our preaching except by reducing the quantity. 
The advancing intellectual activity and capacity of the 
people demand a better sermon than the fathers were in 
the habit of preaching — such a sermon as our preachers 
cannot possibly produce with the present demand for 
two sermons on a Sunday. 

Second. — For all practical purposes and results, one 
sermon on a Sunday is better than two. It is all that 
the average preacher can produce, doing his best, and 
all that the average hearer can receive and " inwardly 
digest." 

Third. — One sermon each Sunday gives the whole 
church half a day in which to engage in Sunday-school 
and missionary work, and a Sunday evening at home — 
an evening of rest and family communion. 

Of course we shall be met by the stereotyped ques- 
tions : " Will not our people go somewhere else to hear 
preaching if they cannot get the two sermons at our 
church ? " " Will not young people go to worse places 
on Sunday night, if the churches should be shut ? " The 
answer to the first question is, that no one will leave 
" our church" who is worth anything in and to it; and 
to the second, that whether the young will go to worse 
places will depend something upon the attractiveness of 



120 Every -Day Topics. 

Christian homes, which are now rather lonely and cheer- 
less places on a Sunday, we confess. Still, if places of 
worship must be open for them, it is easy to have union 
services, dividing the work among the pastors. There 
are a thousand ways to meet special exigencies like this, 
for which we shall find our means amply sufficient when 
the broad reform moves through the land, for the reform 
must come, and the sooner the better. 

The Dragon of the Pews. 

A little direction to the popular imagination is only 
necessary to point out to it a dragon that, every Sunday, 
enters every church. It is handed like Briareus, headed 
like Hydra, and footed like the centiped. It is beautiful 
to look at, with its silken scales of many colors flashing 
in the sun, but its stomach, like that of all respectable 
dragons, is the seat of an insatiable greed. Its huge bulk 
fills the church, and the moment it is at rest it opens its 
mouth. It gorges prayers, hymns, exhortations and ser- 
mons, as the pale man in the desk tosses them out, and 
opens its mouth for more and better. But for this pale 
man, who is under a contract to feed it, and is at his 
wits' and strength's end to accomplish his work, it could 
not live. When, in the morning, he has done all he can 
for it, it crawls out, to come back in the afternoon, with 
its maw just as empty, its feverish eyes just as expectant, 
its mouth just as wide open as it was in the morning. It 
swallows more prayers, more hymns, another sermon, 
other exhortations. It crawls out again to go somewhere 
in the evening, to glut, or try to glut, its horrible greed. 
Like those young women of veterinary parentage it cries, 
" Give ! give ! " But the sermon is the special object of 
its awful appetite. Prayer is but a prelude to the solid 
dish of the feast. Singing is only the Yorkshire-pudding 



Preachers and Preaching. 12 1 

that goes with the beef, and the plum-pudding that 
comes after it. Sermons, sermons, sermons ! — it swal- 
lows them whole. They are taken at a gulp, without 
mastication or digestion, and wide open spring the 
mouths again, in marvellous multiplication. 

To drop the dragon, for he is a clumsy fellow, and a 
somewhat bulky figure to drag on through a whole arti- 
cle, let us have a plain word about the greed for ser- 
mons, so prevalent in these latter days. We doubt 
whether there ever was a time in the history of the 
Christian Church when its ministers were placed in so 
awkward, difficult, and unjust a position as they are to- 
day. Great, expensive edifices of worship are built, for 
which the builders run heavily in debt. That debt can 
only be handled, the interest on it paid, and the princi- 
pal reduced, by filling it with a large and interested con- 
gregation. That congregation cannot be collected and 
held without brilliant preaching. Brilliant preaching is 
scarce, because, and only because, brilliant men are 
scarce, and scarcer still the brilliant men who have the 
gift of eloquence. So soon, therefore, as a man shows 
that he cannot attract the crowd, " down goes his house." 
He may be a scholar, a saint, a man whose example is 
the sweetest sermon that a human life ever uttered, a 
lovely friend, a faithful pastor, a wise spiritual adviser, 
and even a sermonizer of rare attainments and skill, but 
if he cannot draw a crowd by the attractive gifts of 
popular eloquence, he must be sacrificed to the exigen- 
cies of finance. The church must be filled, the interest 
on the debt must be paid, and nothing can do this but a 
man who will " draw." The whole thing is managed 
like a theatre. If an actor cannot draw full houses, the 
rent cannot be paid. So the actor is dismissed and a 
new one is called to take his place. 

There is an old-fashioned idea that a church is built 
Vol. I.— 6 



122 Every -Day Topics. 

for the purposes of public worship. It is not a bad 

idea ; and that exhibition of Christianity which presents 
a thousand lazy people sitting bolt upright in their best 
clothes, gorging sugar-plums, is not a particularly bril- 
liant one. It was once supposed that a Christian had 
something to do, eyen as a layman, and that a pastor 
was a leader and director in Christian work. There cer- 
tainly was a time when the burden of a church was not 
laid crushingly upon the shoulders of its minister, and 
when Christian men and women stood by the man who 
was true to his office and true to them. We seem to 
have outlived it ; and a thousand American churches, 
particularly among the great centres of population, are 
groaning over discomfiture in the sad results. Instead 
of paying their own debts like men, they lay them on 
the backs of their floundering ministers, and if they can- 
not lift them, they go hunting for spinal columns that 
will, or tongues that hold a charm for their dissipation. 
It is a wrong and a shame which ought to be abolished, 
just as soon as sensible men have read this article. 

Who was primarily in the blame for this condition of 
things, we do not know ; but we suspect the ministers 
themselves ought to bear a portion of it. Beginning in 
New England years ago, the sermon in America has al- 
ways been made too much of. The great preachers, by 
going into their pulpits Sunday after Sunday with their 
supreme intellectual efforts, have created the demand 
for such efforts. Metaphysics, didactics, apologetics, 
arrayed in robes of rhetoric, have held high converse with 
them. The great theological wrestlers have made the 
pulpit their arena of conflict. Homilies have grown into 
sermons and sermons into orations. Preachers have set 
aside the teacher's simple task for that of the orator. 
Even to-day, they cannot see, or they will not admit, 
that they have been in the wrong. With a knowledge 



Preachers and Preaching. 123 

of the human mind which cannot but make them aware 
that no more than a single good sermon can be digested 
by a congregation in a day, and that every added word 
goes to the glut of intellect and feeling, and the confu- 
sion of impressions, they still go on preaching twice and 
thrice, and seem more averse than any others to a 
change of policy. It is all intellectual gormandizing, 
and no activity, and no rest and reflection. It is all 
cram and no conflict, and they seem just as averse to 
stop cramming as they did before they apprehended and 
bemoaned the poverty of its results. 

But we are consuming too much of their time. The 
great dragon, with its multitudinous heads, and arms, 
and fee't, is to meet them next Sunday with its mouths all 
open. It has done nothing all the week but sleep, and it 
is getting hungry. Woe to him who has not his two big 
sermons ready ! Insatiate monster, will not one suffice ? 

" No," says the dragon ; " No," says his keeper and 
feeder. Brains, paper, ink, lungs — he wants all you can 
give, and you must give him all you can. The house 
must be filled, the debt must be paid, and you must be 
a popular preacher, or get out of the way. Meantime, 
the dragon sleeps, and meantime the city is badly ruled ; 
drunkenness debauches the people under the shield of 
law, harlotry jostles our youth upon the sidewalks, ob- 
scene literature stares our daughters out of countenance 
from the news-stands, and little children, with no play- 
ground but the gutter, and no home but a garret, are 
growing up in ignorance and vice. If this lazy, over- 
fed, loosely articulated dragon could only be split up 
into active men and women, who would shut their 
mouths and open their eyes and hands, we could have 
something different. But the sermon is the great thing ; 
the people think so, and the preachers agree with them. 
We should like to know what the Master thinks about it. 



124 Every -Day Topics. 



Shepherds and Their Flocks. 

A mischief-breeding mistake is made when pastors 
and people fail to establish and maintain between each 
other a business relation just as independent of the 
spiritual as it is possible to make it. The physician may 
be, and in multitudes of instances is, the dearest family 
friend ; but he lives by his profession, and his services 
have a recognized money value which he expects to re- 
ceive without a question. He would prefer, perhaps, to 
render his services without reward, especially to those 
whom he loves ; but he has mouths to feed and provi- 
sion to make for rainy days, and for the days of helpless- 
ness that come at last to all. So, though love and sym- 
pathy, and self-denial for love and sympathy's sake, may 
have actuated him in all his daily round of duty, he goes 
home at night, takes down his blotter, and enters his 
charges as formally as if he had been selling farm-pro- 
duce or tin-ware. 

There is a feeling in many parishes that it is a gift by 
whatsoever any pastor may be profited by his people — 
that a pastor earns nothing, and that in all things he is 
the beneficiary of the parish. To make this matter a 
thousand times worse, there are pastors not a few who 
take the position to which the parishes assign them, and 
assist in perpetuating the mistake. They are men whose 
hands are always open to receive whatever comes ; who 
delight in donation parties, and who grasp right and left, 
with insatiable greed, at gifts. They become so mean- 
spirited that they do not like to pay for anything, and do 
not really think it right that they should be called upon 
to pay for anything. They are sponges upon their peo- 
ple and the community. Wherever they happen to be, 
they "lie down " on the brethren. There is nothing of 



Preachers and Preaching. 125 

value that they are not glad to receive, and there is no- 
body that they are not glad to be indebted to for favors. 
Sometimes they are extravagant, and have a graceless 
way of getting into debt, out of which they are helped 
yearly, and out of which they expect to be helped yearly. 
The abject meanness into which a pastor can sink, and 
the corresponding and consequent powerlessness into 
which he can descend, find too frequent illustration 
among the American ministry. It is shocking and sick- 
ening that there are some men who seem forced by their 
parishes to live in this way, and it is still more disgust- 
ing to find men who seem tolerably comfortable and 
contented while living in this way. If a man is fit to 
preach, he is worth wages. If he is worth wages, they 
should be paid with all the business regularity that is 
demanded and enforced in business life. There is no 
man in the community who works harder for the money 
he receives than the faithful minister. There is no man 
— in whose work the community is interested — to whom 
regular wages, that shall not cost him a thought, are so 
important. Of what possible use in a pulpit can any 
man be whose weeks are frittered away in mean cares 
and dirty economies ? Every month, or every quarter- 
day, every pastor should be sure that there will be 
placed in his hands, as his just wages, money enough to 
pay all his expenses. Then, without a sense of special 
obligation to anybody, he can preach the truth with free- 
dom, and prepare for his public ministrations without 
distraction. Nothing more cruel to a pastor, or more 
disastrous to his work, can be done than to force upon 
him a feeling of dependence upon the charities of his 
flock. The office of such a man does not rise in dignity 
above that of a court-fool. He is the creature of the pop- 
ular whim, and, a preacher without influence to those 
who do not respect him or his office sufficiently to pay 



126 Every -Day Topics. 

him the wages due to a man who devotes his life to them. 
Manliness cannot live in such a man, except it be in tor- 
ture — a torture endured simply because there are others 
who depend upon the charities doled out to him. 

Good, manly pastors and preachers do not want gifts : 
they want wages. It is not a kindness to eke out insuf- 
ficent salaries by donation parties and by benefactions 
from the richer members of a flock. It is not a merit, 
as they seem to regard it, for parishes or individuals to 
do this. It is an acknowledgment of indebtedness which 
they are too mean to pay in a business way. The pastor 
needs it and they owe it, but they take to themselves the 
credit of benefactors, and place him in an awkward and 
a false position. The influence of this state of things 
upon the world that lies outside of the sphere of Chris- 
tian belief and activity is bad beyond calculation. We 
have had enough of the patronage of Christianity by a 
half-scoffing, half-tolerating world. If Christians do not 
sufficiently recognize the legitimacy of the pastor's call- 
ing to render him fully his just wages, and to assist him 
to maintain his manly independence before the world, 
they must not blame the world for looking upon him with 
a contempt that forbids approach and precludes influ- 
ence. The world will be quite ready to take the pastor 
at the valuation of his friends, and the religion he 
teaches at the price its professors are willing to pay, in a 
business way, for its ministry. 

The Relations of Clergymen to Women. 

Recent events have given rise to a fresh discussion of 
the relations of clergymen to women, some of which 
have been wise and some widely otherwise. It is sup- 
posed by many that the pastor is a man peculiarly sub- 
jected to temptations to unchaste " conversation " with 



Preachers and Preaching. 127 

the female members of his flock. It is undoubtedly and 
delightfully true that a popular preacher is the object 
of genuine affection and admiration to the women who 
sit under his ministry. A true woman respects brains 
and a commanding masculine nature ; but if there is 
any one thing which she naturally chooses to hide from 
her pastor it is her own temptations — if she has any — to 
illicit gratifications. She naturally desires to appear 
well to him upon his own ground of Christian purity. 
To expose herself to his contempt or condemnation 
would be forbidden by all her pretensions, professions, 
and natural instincts. A bad woman might undertake 
to atone for, or to cover up, her outside peccadilloes by 
the most friendly and considerate treatment of her pas- 
tor, but she would not naturally take him for her victim. 
It is precisely with this man that she wishes to appear at 
her best. Any man with the slightest knowledge of 
human nature can see that her selfish as well as her 
Christian interests are against any exhibitions of im- 
modest and unchaste desires in the presence of her 
spiritual teacher. 

There are only two classes of women with whom a 
minister is liable to have what, in the language of the 
world, would be called " dangerous intimacies." The 
first consists of discontented wives — discontented through 
any cause connected with their husbands or themselves. 
A woman finds herself married to a brute. She suffers 
long in silence ; her heart is broken or weary, and she 
wants counsel, and is dying for sympathy. She tells her 
story to the one man who is — to her — guide, teacher, in- 
spirer, and friend. He gives her the best counsel of 
which he is capable, comforts her if he can, sympath- 
izes with her, treats her with kindness and consideration. 
That a woman should, in many instances, look upon such 
a man as little less than a god, and come to regard him 



128 Every -Day Topics. 

as almost her only solace amid the daily accumulating 
trials of her life, is as natural as it is for water to run 
down hill. That she should respect him more than she 
can respect a brutal husband — that half an hour of his 
society should be worth more to her heart and her self- 
respect than the miserable years of her bondage to a 
cruel master — is also entirely natural. He cannot help 
it, nor can he find temptation in it, unless he chooses to 
do so. Women, under these circumstances, do not go 
to their pastors either to tempt or to be tempted. 

There is another class of women who are thrown, or 
who throw themselves, into what may be called an in- 
timate association with the clergy. It is a class that 
have nothing else to do so pleasant as to be petting some 
nice man, to whose presence and society circumstances 
give them admission. They are a very harmless set — 
gushing maiden ladies, aged and discreet widows with 
nice houses, sentimental married women who, with no 
brains to lend, are fond of borrowing them for the orna- 
mentation of all possible social occasions. A popular 
minister receives a great deal of worship from this class, 
at which, when it is not too irksome, we have no doubt 
he quietly laughs. The good old female parishioner who 
declared that her pastor's cup of tea would be " none 
too good if it were all molasses," was a fair type of these 
sentimental creatures, to whom every minister, possess- 
ing the grace of courtesy, is fair game. Tcf suppose that 
a pastor, sufficiently putty-headed to be pleased with 
this sort of worship, or sufficiently manly to be bored by 
it, is in a field of temptation to unchastity, is simply ab- 
surd. One is too feminine for such temptation, and the 
other altogether too masculine. 

When these two classes are set aside, what have we 
left ? Virtuous and contented mothers of virtuous 
daughters — daughters whom he baptizes in their infancy, 






Preachers and Preaching. 129 

trains in his Sunday-school, marries when they are mar- 
ried, and buries with sympathetic tears when they die. 
In such families as these his presence is a benediction ; 
and to suppose that he is tempted here, is to suppose 
him a brute and to deny the facts of human nature. We 
verily believe there is no class in the community so little 
tempted as the clergy, and there certainly is no class 
surrounded on every side with such dissuasives from un- 
chaste conduct. To a clergyman, influence and a good 
name are inestimable treasures. To stand before con- 
fiding audiences, Sunday after Sunday, and preach that 
which he knows condemns himself in the eyes of a single 
member of his flock, must be a crucifixion from whose 
tortures the bravest man would shrink. There are bad 
men in the pulpit without doubt. There is now and 
then a woman who would not shrink from an intrigue 
with such; but women do not choose ministers for lovers, 
nor do ministers, as a class, find themselves subjected to 
great temptations by them. If ministers are tempted 
by the circumstances of their office, they may be sure 
that they are moved by their own lust and enticed, and 
that their office may very profitably spare their services. 
As a class, the Christian ministers of the country are 
the purest men we have. We believe they average bet- 
ter than the Apostles did at the first. Jesus, in his little 
company of twelve, found one that was a devil. The 
world has improved until, we believe, there is not more 
than one devil in a hundred. In any scandal connected 
with the name of a clergyman and a female member of 
his flock, the probabilities are all in favor of his inno- 
cence. The man of the world who keeps his mistress, 
the sensualist who does not believe in the purity of any 
man, the great community of scamps and scalawags, 
are always ready to believe anything reflecting upon a 
clergyman's chastity. It only remains for clergymen 
6* 



1 30 Every -Day Topics. 

themselves to be careful to avoid the appearance of evil. 
Nothing can be more sure and terrible than their punish- 
ment when guilty of prostituting their office, and noth- 
ing is so valuable to them as an unsullied name. To 
preserve this, no painstaking can be too fatiguing, no 
self-denial too expensive, no weeding out of all untoward 
associations too exacting. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Mr. Tyndall's Address. 

MR. TYNDALL recently delivered a notable address 
before the British Association — notable for its bril- 
liant panoramic presentation of the various philosophies 
and speculations concerning God and Nature, and for 
his own personal confession. Democritus, Epicurus, 
Lucretius, Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Giordano, Bru- 
no, Pere Gassendi,- Bishop Butler, Darwin, Herbert 
Spencer, and John Stuart Mill are all passed in review, 
their respective discoveries, speculations, and opinions 
presented and commented upon, and, at last, we get at 
Mr. Tyndall himself. It would be hard to find, in equal 
compass, so valuable a mass of information on the sub- 
ject discussed, and for this the intelligent reading public 
will be grateful ; but, after all, the great English scien- 
tist teaches us absolutely nothing about the origin of 
matter, motion and life. We rise from the perusal of 
his address with no new light on the great problems he 
presents. The existence of matter is a mystery, the 
origin and perpetuation of life are mysteries. God is a 
mystery. The sources of the force that builds, and 
holds, and wheels the worlds, endows every particle of 
matter with might which it never for a moment relin- 
quishes in its myriad combinations — vital and chemical 
— adapts organisms to conditions and conditions to or- 



132 Every-Day Topics. 

ganisms, and weaves all into cosmical harmony, are 
brooded over by clouds which science can never pierce. 

There are limits to thought, and none ''by search- 
ing" can find out God. Because Mr. Tyndall cannot 
find God, is there, therefore, no God ? He says : 
" Either let us open our doors freely to the conception 
of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically 
change our notions of matter." In other words, he 
would say to us that there is a God who created all 
things, and endowed them with the principle of life, or 
matter has an innate power to evolve life in organic 
forms. The alternative is as inevitable as it is simple, 
and our scientific teacher does not hesitate to say that 
he finds in matter " the promise and potency of every 
form and quality of life." This declaration he endeav- 
ors to soften by intimations that matter itself may possi- 
bly have no existence, save in our consciousness, and 
that all we know of it is that our senses have been acted 
upon by powers and qualities which we attribute to it. 
The existence of matter, therefore, is not an established 
fact, but an inference. The logic of his doctrine leads, 
of course, to what, in common language, is called " an- 
nihilation." If life is evolved by the potency of matter, 
it depends for its continual existence on the potency of 
matter. When any vital organism dissolves, that is the 
end of it. Its matter passes into new forms, and evolves 
new life. Thought is a product of matter. Love, joy, 
sorrow, heroism, worship are products of matter. All 
this Mr. Tyndall sees and accepts. 

Well, who knows but God is a product of matter ? 
Mr. Tyndall himself is a pretty brilliant and powerful 
product of matter : who knows but that, by the infinite 
evolutions of this eternal matter, a being has been pro- 
duced so powerful that he has been able to take the 
reins of the Universe, and to have everything his own 



Christianity and Science. 133 

way ? It has evolved man, and thus produced a form 
of life that lords it over seas and storms, that controls 
animal life, that builds enormous cities, that threads the 
world with telegraphs, railroads, and cables, writes books, 
measures the heavens, mounts from power to power. 
Is it any more remarkable that it should evolve or create 
a God, who, going from might to might and glory to 
glory, through infinite ages, should have something to 
say about Mr. Tyndall and the rest of us ? Matter was 
just as likely to possess the power to evolve a " moral 
and intelligent Governor of the Universe " as to evolve 
a man. So perhaps we have a God after all ! 

We sympathize with Mr. Tyndall — heartily — in his 
enmity to bigotry and ecclesiastical domination, but 
the intolerance with which science has been treated in 
various ages of the world deserves much of charitable 
consideration. Men in their ignorance have seen that 
certain doctrines which they thought they found in what 
they in all honesty believed to be the revealed word of 
God were controverted by scientific men. They have 
clung to their Bible because they supposed that, with 
their views of the Bible, their religion and their own per- 
sonal salvation were identified. Let us be charitable to 
such. Not much can be expected of men who are 
evolved from matter ! There must be a great choice in 
matter when the production of men is concerned, and 
really matter is doing better than it did! When Mr. 
Tyndall can say what he says, and do what he does, 
without hinderance and without any danger of dungeon 
or fagot, it seems as if matter had done a good deal to 
deserve. his gratitude and ours. After all, intolerance 
and bigotry were in matter to begin with. They have 
simply been evolved ! The promise of them and the 
potency to produce them were in them at the start ! 

In view of the materialism of Mr. Tyndall, what he 



134 Every- Day Topics. 

says concerning the religious element in life is about as 
feeble nonsense as that in. which Mr. Matthew Arnold 
indulges in his " Literature and Dogma." With Mr. 
Arnold religion is morality warmed and heightened by 
emotion. Mr. Tyndall speaks of the " immovable basis 
of the religious sentiment in the emotional nature of 
man." What does he mean ? Does he mean that there 
is the possibility of religious sentiment in a man who 
does not believe in the existence of God as his creator, 
preserver, benefactor, father, governor — the source and 
sum of all moral perfections ? If he does, then the 
less he talks about religion the better, for he can only 
do so to manifest his childish lack of comprehension of 
the subject. If man is evolved by the potency of matter 
— if there is no soul within him that bears a filial rela- 
tion to the great soul of the universe, and will exist 
when its material dwelling goes back to dust ; if there 
is no ordaining intelligence behind all moral law ; if 
there is no object of worship, or faith, or trust, or love, 
or reverence to be apprehended by the heart — what a 
mockery is it to talk about the religious sentiment ! We 
are assured by Mr. Tyndall that the region of emotion 
is the proper sphere of religion. The statement shows 
how shallow his apprehensions are of this great subject. 
A religion which touches neither motives, character, nor 
conduct may well pass for little with any man ; and we 
really do not see why Mr. Tyndall should pay any atten- 
tion to it whatever. Even science can be ignorant of 
the simplest things, and it certainly does not become it 
to be supercilious or contemptuous in its treatment of 
those who question its dicta when it invades the region 
of their faith. 

The question will naturally occur to many minds, 
whether Mr. Tyndall gives us anything worthy to take 
the place of that which he undertakes to read out of our 



Christianity and Science. 135 

beliefs. Does his materialistic view dignify human life 
and destiny, tend to enlarge and strengthen the motives 
which bind us to virtue, give us comfort in affliction, 
add new meaning to existence and experience ? Not at 
all. He brings us out of matter ; he gives us back to 
matter. He makes us indebted to matter for all our 
joys and for all our sorrows, and places us to walk on a 
level with brute life, only our heads being above it. 
That is all, and he must not be disappointed to see the 
Christian world turning away from his conclusions, with 
content in its faith and pity for him. He knows nothing 
on this subject beyond the rest of us. He offers us a 
material universe that made itself, stamped with laws 
that made themselves, and informed with the promise 
and the potency of all forms of life. This is his specu- 
lation, and it is worth just as much as the speculation of 
a peasant, and no more. He offers it to those who be- 
lieve that nothing was ever made without a maker ; that 
nothing was ever designed without a designer ; that no 
law was ever given without a lawgiver — in short, that 
power and intelligence necessarily precede all results of 
power that betray intelligence, through the analogies 
apprehended by the human mind. We do not see how 
his confession can do more than prove how utterly in- 
competent the pure scientist is to apprehend religion and 
its fundamental truths. 

Science and Christianity. 

In the current discussions of the relations of Chris- 
tianity to science, there is one fact that seems to have 
dropped out of notice ; yet it is full of meaning, and 
deserves, for Christianity's sake, to be raised and kept 
before the public. Who, or what, has raised science to 
its present commanding position ? What influence is it 



136 Every -Day Topics. 

that has trained the investigator, educated the people, 
and made it possible for the scientific man to exist, and 
the people to comprehend him ? Who built Harvard 
College ? What motives form the very foundation-stones 
of Yale ? To whom, and to what, are the great institu- 
tions of learning, scattered all over this country, in- 
debted for their existence ? There is hardly one of 
these that did not have its birth in, and has not had 
its growth from, Christianity. The founders of all these 
institutions, more particularly those of greatest influence 
and largest facilities, were Christian men, who worked 
simply in the interest of their Master. The special sci- 
entific schools that have been grafted upon these insti- 
tutions are children of the same parents, reared and 
endowed for the same work. Christianity is the un- 
doubted and indisputable mother of the scientific cul- 
ture of the country. But for her, our colleges would 
never have been built — our common schools would 
never have been instituted. Wherever a free Chris- 
tianity has gone, it has carried with it education and 
culture. 

The public, or a considerable portion of it, seems to 
forget this, or has come to regard Christianity as op- 
posed to science in its nature and aims. It is almost re- 
garded, by many minds, as the friend of darkness, as 
the opponent of free inquiry and the enslaver of thought. 
The very men who have been reared by her in some in- 
stances turn against her, disowning their mother and 
denying the sources of their attainments, and to-day she 
has herself almost forgotten that it is her hand that has 
reared all the temples of learning, framed the educa- 
tional policy of the nation, and, with wide sacrifice of 
treasure, reared the very men who are now defaming 
her. 

Now, if Christianity is the foe of science, has she not 



Christianity and Science. 137 

taken a singular method of demonstrating her enmity ? 
To-day, as freely as ever, she is feeding the fountains 
of scientific knowledge. Her most devoted ministers, 
crowned with the finest culture of the time, preside over 
the schools which educate her enemies. Where is the 
sign of her illiberality, the evidence of her timidity, the 
show of a lack of confidence in ultimate results in all 
this? The easily demonstrable, nay, the patent truth 
is, that Christianity was the first, as she remains the 
fast and fostering, friend of science ; and all attempts to 
place her in a false position will be sure to react upon 
those who engage in them. The devotion of the Chris- 
tian Church of this country to education is one of the 
most notable facts in its history ; and there is nothing to 
which it points with so much pride and satisfaction as 
to its educational institutions. 

The radical difference in the standpoints of the two 
parties in this great controversy explains the contro- 
versy, and shows its motives at their sources. To the 
man of faith all science is a knowledge of God, through 
a knowledge of his works and his processes. That which 
increases the knowledge of the great Creator of all, 
through the study of His creations and His methods, is 
regarded as a purely Christian work. That which en- 
larges the mind of man, gives him power over nature, 
carries him farthest toward the Being in whose image he 
was made, comes within the office of Christian teaching. 
Science is thus the handmaid of Christianity, and will, 
in all coming ages, be cherished as such. To the man 
of science who rejects faith, science is simply the study 
of nature. He sees no God where the Christian appre- 
hends him. He finds in matter all the potencies which 
produce its combinations, qualities, life. He dismisses 
a personal God from the universe, and makes of himself 
only an exalted brute, whose physical death ends him. 



138 Every -Day Topics, 

The real controversy touches simply the question of the 
existence of a God. The question of revelation is prac- 
tically nothing to the ultra-scientist, because he does not 
believe in the personality revealed. 

Now, if this is simply a question of opinion, we would 
like to ask — granting for the nonce that there has been 
no demonstration on either side — which opinion has 
been and is most fruitful of good results to the world ? 
Can motives be found in that of the ultra-scientist suffi- 
cient to elevate a race to knowledge and culture ? 
Would our country be as learned, enlightened, scienti- 
fic, and polite as it is to-day, if a community of ultra- 
scientists had settled Plymouth Colony and Massachu- 
setts Bay ? We presume that no man would be so 
simple as to suppose it would. Where, in that science 
which recognizes no personal God, is to be seen the mo- 
tive of self-sacrifice which would have founded the insti- 
tutions of learning that are the glory of our country ? 
It is not there ; and, if not, is a lie better than the 
truth ? Has it more vitality, more munificence, a better 
estimate of human nature, more power for human good, 
more liberality, than the truth ? These are questions 
that it would be well for scientific men to answer in a 
scientific way. Simply to show that the Christian idea 
of a personal God is one which leads to the abnegation 
of self in devotion to the common good ; simply to show 
that there is something in the Christian scheme which 
furnishes motives for making mankind happier and bet- 
ter, and happier and better than any scientific affirma- 
tion or negation can make them, is scientifically to de- 
monstrate that a personal God lives, and that Christian- 
ity is a scheme of truth. Would it be hard to show this ? 
It certainly would be impossible to show the contrary. 

The strife between science and Christianity is misun- 
derstood on ike part of Christianity. It goes deeper 



Christianity and Science. 139 

than Christianity. It is a strife between those who do 
not believe in a personal God and those who do, of all 
faiths, all over the world. That settled, the scientific 
opponents of Christianity would leave the field or occupy 
it. Until their proposition is proved or abandoned, we 
suggest that it will be a decent thing for them to treat 
with respect the mother who bore them, and cover with 
their charity the paps they have sucked. 

By Their Fruits. 

Was it Thackeray who said that the difference between 
genius and talent was the difference between the length 
of two maggots ? It was worthy of him, at least, and 
like him. When a man gets large enough to know that 
he is almost infinitely small, he is tolerably ripe. When 
he becomes wise enough to realize that his wisdom is 
folly, his profoundest learning ignorance, and his opin- 
ions, drawn from partial views of truth and its relations, 
of little value, he has risen into a realm where he drops 
his robe of pride, and drapes himself in the garment of 
docility. The simplicity and the teachableness of great 
men have been the wonder of the vulgar through all time. 
At the beginning of our late civil war, a capitalist from 
the country came to New York for the purpose of acquir- 
ing a stock of financial information. What was to be 
the effect of this war upon the finances of the country ? 
How should he manage to save his wealth ? How should 
he manage to increase it ? These were the questions he 
put to the wisest financier he knew. The old man 
pointed to an apple-woman across the street. " Go and 
ask her," he said ; " she knows just as much about it as 
I do." Yet opinions were as plenty as blackberries, in 
Wall Street, while the results of the war, as they accu- 
mulated, proved that they were beyond human sagacity 



140 Every -Day Topics. 

to foresee, and that the man most competent to foresee 
them had no more financial prescience than the ignorant 
apple-woman. 

There is a realm of inquiry — indeed, there are many- 
realms of inquiry — where the opinions and speculations 
of one man are just as valuable as those of another man 
— no more so, no less — for those of both are valueless. 
The speculations of such a man as Mr. Tyndall on the 
origin of life attract a great deal of attention ; yet Mr. 
Tyndall knows just as much about the origin of life as 
the apple-woman on the corner, and no more. The 
speculations about development and atoms, and mole- 
cules, form, perhaps, an elevated amusement. They 
are better than the Hippodrome.and the Negro Minstrels, 
without being more instructive. It is better to speculate 
on the atomic theory than to play battledoor and shuttle- 
cock. It is better to speculate a personal God out of 
the universe than to go on a spree — better to ignore his 
work than to mar it. But the whole thing rises no high- 
er than elevated amusement. It does not give even the 
smallest basis for sound opinion. All these speculators, 
wrapped around with scientific reputations, battering 
vainly against the limits of thought and scientific knowl- 
edge, and coming back with their reports of having seen 
something more than their fellows, are pretenders — to 
be praised, perhaps, for their enterprise, but laughed at 
for their conclusions. 

Mr. Tyndall finds in matter the promise and the po- 
tency of all forms and qualities of life. Who put the 
promise and the potency there ? Ah ! that is the question, 
and Mr. Tyndall has not solved it. He goes no farther, 
perhaps, than to say that he finds them there. Has he 
found them there ? In what form have they presented 
themselves to his scientific investigation ? Can he show 
what he has found ? Alas ! he has found nothing new — 



Christianity and Science. 141 

seen nothing that others have not seen. He has only- 
come to a personal conclusion and indulged in a personal 
speculation, and that conclusion and that speculation are 
not only unscientific, but they are valueless. 

Is there not some way — some scientific way — in which 
a just conclusion may be arrived at concerning this great 
subject ? If we should stand at the beginning of the 
world, and know the want of bread, would it not be very 
unscientific for us to get together a bundle of seeds or 
germs, and speculate as to which would be the most 
likely to give us bread ? Would it not be better to plant 
every seed, label its bed, watch its growth, and examine 
its fruits ? Would not that be the scientific way of as- 
certaining the nature and characteristics of the great 
power that was to feed us ? Certainly that seed which 
would yield the best results, and address itself most di- 
rectly and beneficently to our wants, would be the one 
to which we should give our faith. To do anything else 
would be to rebel against the law of our nature. To do 
anything else would be irrational and unscientific. 

Well, certain seeds have been planted in the world of 
mind. They have borne, in various times and in many 
countries, their legitimate fruits. Can we not find, in 
the adaptation of those fruits to human want, a scientific 
conclusion concerning the tree or plant that bears them? 
Is it not strictly scientific to conclude that the better the 
fruit, and the better its results, the more thoroughly is 
the seed vitalized by everlasting and essential truth ? 
If certain ideas of the nature and character of God, and 
of the immortality of the soul — if certain ideas of human 
responsibility — have dignified humanity more, elevated 
it more, civilized it more, purified its morals, sweetened 
its society, stimulated its hopes, assuaged its sorrows, 
developed its benevolence, and repressed its selfishness, 
more than any other ideas, are not those ideas scientifi- 



142 Every -Day Topics. 

cally ascertained to be nearer the truth than any others \ 
If they are not, then we misunderstand the nature and 
the processes of science. 

There has been abroad in the world, for many centu- 
ries, an idea, advanced and maintained by more religions 
than one, that there is at the head of the universe an 
Almighty God — a Spirit who has created all material 
things, and informed them with law — a Spirit that is in 
itself the source of all life. There has been the further 
idea that this God is a person, who, though His mode 
of being is beyond human ken, recognizes the persons 
He has created, loves them, regards them as His family, 
and holds them personally responsible to His moral law. 
There has been the further idea that mankind, in conse- 
quence of their common parentage, are a band of broth- 
ers and sisters, who owe to one another good-will and 
unselfish service. There has been a further idea that 
this personal God is a being to be worshipped as the sum 
and source of all perfection — to be thanked, praised, 
prayed to, in the full recognition of filial relationship, 
and a full faith in His providential and paternal care. 
Out of this group of ideas has come the world's best civi- 
lization. Out of it have come churches and schools, and 
colleges, and hospitals, and benign governments and 
missions, and a thousand institutions of brotherly benevo- 
lence. From it have sprung untold heroisms. It has 
recognized human rights. It has had no smaller aim than 
that of human perfection. It has armed millions of men 
and women with fortitude to bear the ills of life. It has 
made society safe wherever it has been dominant ; it has 
transformed death into a gate that opens upon immortal- 
ity. Associated with a thousand dogmas invented by 
mistaken men, it has still done all that has been done to 
redeem the world to peace and goodness ; and if this 
group of ideas has not scientifically demonstrated itself 



Christianity and Science. 143 

to be nearer the truth than are all the negations and spec- 
ulations of scientific dreamers, then there is no such thing 
as science. 

Prayers and Pills. 

A singular article, containing an unprecedented propo- 
sition, appeared recently in the Contemporary Review ', 
entitled : " The Prayer for the Sick : Hints toward a 
Serious Attempt to Estimate its Value." Prof. Tyndall 
regarded it as of sufficient importance to claim from him 
a word of introduction. He thinks it quite desirable to 
have clearer notions than we now possess of the action 
of "Providence" in physical affairs. The proposition 
of the writer is to establish a scientific, experimental test 
of the power of prayer in the healing of the sick. He 
asks : " that one single ward, or hospital, under the care 
of first-rate physicians and surgeons " (including Sir 
Henry Thompson, we presume, the author of the propo- 
sition), " containing certain numbers of persons afflicted 
with those diseases which have been best studied, and 
of which the mortality rates are best known, whether the 
diseases are those which are treated by medical or by 
surgical remedies, should be, during a period of not less, 
say, than three or five years, made the object of special 
prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and that, at 
the end of that time, the mortality rates should be com- 
pared with the past rates, and also with that of other 
leading hospitals, similarly well managed, during the 
same period." Prof. Tyndall, in his introduction, says : 
" Two opposing parties here confront each other— the 
one affirming the habitual intrusion of supernatural 
power, in answer to the petitions of men; the other 
questioning, if not denying, any such intrusion." 

It seems, therefore, that the whole question of Provi- 
dence and prayer is to be decided by this experiment, 



144 Every -Day Topics. 

and it will also be seen that Christianity itself will thus 
be placed on trial. This is rather a large matter to be 
disposed of in the ward of a single hospital, and, as there 
is so much at stake, both parties ought to be well agreed 
as to the fairness of the experiment. 

It is to be remembered, to begin with, that a propo- 
sition of this kind could not possibly come from a man 
who, conscious of his own unworthiness, and humbly 
subordinating his will to that of God, expresses his ear- 
nest desires in prayer. No Christian and no body of 
Christians — not even "the whole body of the faithful" — 
would consent to have the question of God's providential 
interference in human affairs decided for the world by 
the strength of their hold upon the Almighty arm, through 
the medium of their prayers. The experiment would be 
preposterous, and almost blasphemously presumptuous. 
No body of reverent Christian physicians would engage 
in such a competition. With all the fair seeming of the 
proposition, it is evidently impossible to be acted upon. 
The issue is tremendous. The whole question of the 
supernatural in human affairs, and the whole question of 
Christianity based upon it, would be involved in that 
issue ; and every Christian would shrink in terror from 
the presumption that the power of his poor petitions was 
relied upon to decide so vital a matter. So, if the ex- 
periment were tried, it would be instituted and executed 
by men who believe neither in prayer nor Providence, 
and who would conduct it with reference to their own 
ends. The world would not trust them, and the world 
ought not to trust them. 

But supposing the physicians were equally divided 
between Christian and unchristian, and that the two 
bodies were placed in watch of each other : would it be 
altogether fair to give the ward or hospital subjected to 
the experiment any medical treatment whatever ? Phy- 



Christianity and Science. 145 

sicians make mistakes sometimes, and thwart the God 
of nature, who happens at the same time to be the God 
of Providence. Evidently a hospital without, would offer 
a fairer chance for experiment than one with, physicians. 
Then, if the result were not on the side of the sceptics, 
would they admit that the God of Providence cured the 
patients in answer to prayer, or would they claim that 
the unaided power of nature was the healing agent ? 
Who knows, in this world of medical empiricism, whether 
the great obstacle to the efficacy of the prayers of the 
faithful is not the medical profession itself? And who 
knows that Providence does not withhold its cures that 
the world may learn, in the long years, that it is best to 
do without the medical profession altogether ? 

We take it for granted that the writer of the strange 
proposition we are considering belongs to what is de- 
nominated ''the regular profession." Now, if there is 
anything thoroughly well known among the people, it is 
that "the regular profession" object to any system of 
treatment not "regular," and doubt the reality of any 
cure not wrought by "regular" means. Is there any 
medical society that would permit its members to co- 
operate with irregular measures like those which this 
man proposes ? Would not this be equivalent to a con- 
sultation with Providence — a practitioner not recognized 
by the societies generally ? Is prayer regarded as an 
article of the materia medica ? Is not this whole propo- 
sition grossly irregular, and does it not become the pro- 
fession to set upon this writer who thus proposes to 
compromise his position, and make an example of him? 
If not, then we have a proposition to make which is en- 
tirely practicable. It is one in which a great multitude 
of people would be much interested. Let us institute an 
experiment to see what system of medicine Providence 
favors. Our doctor of the Contemporary Review is ut- 

VOL. I.— 7 



146 Every -Day Topics. 

terly impracticable, but he manifests a disposition to 
try experiments, and shows a healthy fearlessness of 
professional proscription. We propose, therefore, that 
a hospital be run three years by the regular profession, 
then three years by, say, the hydropathists, and then 
three years by the homceopathists. Let each body of 
practitioners have the benefit not only of the "general 
prayer," or prayer for " all men," but of special prayer. 
Thus the moral effect of the use of material remedies 
would be secured to all, and we should learn what sys- 
tem of medicine Providence favors, or the one which in- 
terferes least with its laws. Here now is something 
entirely practical, and there are many people interested 
in the decision of this question where one is seriously in 
doubt about the other. The world is immensely — nay, 
vitally, concerned in the decision to be arrived at through 
an experiment like this ? Shall we have it ? 

We rather think not. We should really like to know 
which system of medical treatment the God of Provi- 
dence or the God of Nature favors. Christendom must 
give up its Christianity or believe in prayer — prayer for 
the sick — prayer for the well. It will not consent that 
that system of religion on which is based the highest 
civilization of the world shall be decided for or against 
by the power of its prayers over Providence. No candid 
man would ever ask, and no sane man expect, it to do 
so. So we will leave the scientist to his Nature and the 
Christian to his Providence in the practical and most 
desirable experiment which we propose. Let us get at 
the truth. If it is not " irregular" to try an experiment 
with Providence, it ought not to be irregular to try one 
with less considerable personages. But that would put 
the medical profession on trial, which is so much more 
important an institution than Christianity that it will not 
be considered for a moment. 



REVIVALS AND REFORMS. 

Mr. Moody and His Work. 

T17E suppose there is no question that Mr. Moody has 
* * done a marvellous work, both in Great Britain and 
America. There is a great deal of popular curiosity to 
know exactly what it was, and how it was done. The 
remarkable thing about it seems to be that there was 
no remarkable thing about it, save in its results. Not a 
revivalist, but an evangelist ; not a stirrer-up of excite- 
ment, but a calm preacher of Jesus Christ, Mr. Moody 
has talked in his earnest, homely way upon those truths 
which he deemed essential to spiritual welfare, in this 
world and the next. Men went to hear him not only by 
thousands, but by tens of thousands. Not only the com- 
mon people "heard him gladly," but very uncommon 
people — Prime Ministers, Earls, Duchesses, Members 
of Parliament, Members of Congress, Doctors of the 
Law, Doctors of Divinity, and clergymen by the hun- 
dred. All testified to the power of his preaching. The 
doubters were convinced, the wicked were converted, 
weary teachers of religion were filled with fresh courage 
and hopefulness, and there was a great turning of 
thoughts and hearts Godward. Mr. Tyndall and Mr. 
Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer were not very much 



i4o Every -Day Topics. 

in men's minds while Mr. Moody was around. One 
thing was very certain, viz. : the people wanted some- 
thing that Mr. Moody had to bestow, and they "went 
for it." 

Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey think that the work they 
have seemed* to do has not been* done by them at all, 
but by the Spirit of the Almighty. It looks like it, we 
confess. Either the truth which Mr. Moody preached 
was wonderfully needed, and wonderfully adapted to hu- 
man want ; either the multitudes were starving for the 
bread of their souls' life, or there was some force above 
Mr. Moody's modest means which must be held account- 
able for the stupendous results. This is a scientific age. 
The great men of science now engaged in uprooting the 
popular faith in Christianity have a new problem in sci- 
ence. Was there enough in Mr. Moody's eloquence, or 
personal influence, to account for the effect produced ? 
Would it not be very unscientific to regard these little 
means sufficient to account for these results ? It is a fair 
question, and it deserves a candid answer. Until we get 
this answer, people who have nothing but common sense 
to guide them must repose upon the conviction that the 
power which Mr. Moody seemed to wield was in the 
truth he promulgated, or that it emanated from a source 
which he recognized as the Spirit of God. 

But not alone have the scientists received a lesson 
from the wonderful results of Mr. Moody's simple preach- 
ing. The Christian ministry, all over the world, have 
found instruction in it which ought to last them during 
their life-time. As nearly as we can ascertain, Mr. 
Moody has not paid very much attention to the preach- 
ing of Judaism — involving a theism and a system of doc- 
trine which Christ came to set aside and supersede. Paul 
resolved that he wouldn't know anything but Jesus Christ, 
and we are inclined to think that Mr. Moody doesn't 



Revivals and Reforms. 149 

know anything but Jesus Christ. It is a fortunate igno- 
rance for him, and for the world. Our preachers, as a 
rule, know so many things besides the Master ; they 
have wrought up such a complicated scheme, based on 
a thousand other things besides Jesus Christ, that they 
confess they don't understand it themselves. The man 
who offered a pair of skates to the boy who would learn 
the catechism, and a four-story house, with a brown- 
stone front, if he could understand it, risked nothing be- 
yond the fancy hardware ; and yet we are assured that 
the path of life is so plain, that a wayfaring man, though 
a fool, need not err therein. And, considering the fact 
that Christ is the veritable " Word of God" — that he is, 
in himself alone, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," 
and considering also the use that has been made of the 
Bible in complicating and loading down his simple re- 
ligion with the theological inventions of men, it may 
legitimately be questioned whether the progress of Chris- 
tianity has not been hindered by our possession of all 
the sacred books outside of the evangelical histories. 

At any rate, we see what has come to Mr. Moody from 
preaching without much learning, without much the- 
ology, and without much complicated machinery, the 
truth as it is in Jesus Christ. A salvation and a cure he 
has somehow and somewhere found in the life, death, 
and teachings of this wonderful historical personage. 
For the simple story of this personage he has found 
more listeners than could count his words — attentive, 
breathless, hungry, thirsty, believing. They have 
flocked to the refuge he has opened for them like doves 
to their windows. He has helped to start tens of thou- 
sands in the true way of life. He has done well not to 
be proud of his work. He has done well to refuse the 
wealth ready to be bestowed upon him. In this, he has 
exemplified the religion of his Master, and shown a just 



1 5° Every -Day Topics. 

appreciation of the real sources of the power which he 
has been enabled to exert. 

Against such demonstrations of the power of Christ and 
Christianity as are afforded by the London and New 
York meetings, infidelity can make no headway. They 
prove that man wants religion, and that when he finds 
what he wants, in its purity and simplicity, he will get it. 
They prove that Christianity only needs to be preached 
in purity and simplicity to win the triumphs for which 
the Church has looked and prayed so long. The cure 
for the moral evils of the world is just as demonstrably 
in the Christian religion as the elements of vegetable 
life are in the soil. Penitence, forgiveness, reformation, 
the substitution of love for selfishness as the governing 
principle of life, piety toward God, and good-will to men 
■ — in short, the adoption of Christ as. Saviour, King, ex- 
emplar, teacher — this is Christianity — the whole of it. 
Christianity reveals the fatherhood of God, and men 
want a father. Christianity reforms society and govern- 
ment by reforming their constituents, and there is not a 
moral evil from which the world suffers that is not de- 
monstrably curable by it. If there is any man who can- 
not find its divinity and its authority in this fact, we pity 
his blindness. 

We believe that Mr. Moody has done a great deal of 
good directly to those who have come to him for impulse 
and instruction ; but the indirect results of his preach- 
ing, upon the Christian teachers of the world, ought to 
multiply his influence a hundred fold. The simple, vital 
truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and not as it is in Moses, 
or Daniel, or Jeremiah, or anybody else, for that matter, 
is what the world wants. And when the Christian world 
gets down to that, it will get so near together that it 
will be ashamed of, and laugh at, its own divisions. It 
is nonsense to suppose that the Divine Spirit is any more 



Revivals and Reforms. 151 

willing to bless Mr. Moody's work than that of any other 
man, provided the work done is the same. The fact 
that his work has prospered more than that of others 
proves simply that it is better — that Christianity is 
preached more purely by him than by others. It be- 
comes religious teachers, then, to find out what he does 
preach, and how he preaches it. 



CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 

The Average Prayer-Meeting. 

n^HE prayer-meeting constitutes so important a part 
•*■ of the Christian social life of this country, and is 
so much a thing of the people, that it is legitimately a 
topic for the examination and discussion of laymen. 
We approach the subject with abundant reverence for 
the time-honored estimate of its usefulness, and only 
with a wish for the advancement of its efficiency as an 
agency in spiritual culture. That it is in any respect 
the boon that it should be, to the hundreds of thousands 
who attend upon and participate in its exercises, no one 
pretends. That it is the lamest and most nearly impo- 
tent of any of the agencies employed by the Church, in 
perhaps two cases out of every three, is evident to all. 
Let us see if we can present a fair picture of the average 
prayer-meeting. 

In a church of, say two hundred and fifty members, 
there is an average attendance of fifty persons. These 
are made up, so far as the men are concerned, of the prin- 
cipal church officials — the deacons, elders, etc. The re- 
mainder are women — the best women of the church, and 
such of their families as they can induce to accompany 
them. The clergyman, overworked, and discouraged by 
the small number in attendance, is there to lead. He 
gives out his hymn, prays, reads the Scriptures, and, 



Christian Practice. 153 

with a few remarks, "throws open the meeting" to the 
laymen for prayer or exhortation. There is a long 
period of silence. The deacons, who suspect that their 
voices have been heard too often, or that they may be 
in the way of others, remain silent. At last either one 
of them is called upon by the pastor, or some poor man, 
under the spur of a sense of duty, rises and utters, as 
well as he can, the words of a prayer. Everybody sees 
that he is in a struggle, and that he is so little at home 
that he is only anxious to get through without breaking 
down. The audience is, of course, sympathetic, and, 
instead of being led in prayer, becomes as anxious for 
him as he is for himself. And so, with long patches 
of embarrassing and painful silence, interspersed with 
dreary platitudes of prayer and speech, unrefreshing 
and lacking spontaneity to a sad degree, the meeting 
goes on to the end, which comes when the chapel clock 
shows that an hour has been spent in the service. To 
suppose that any great good comes from the spending of 
an hour in this way, is to offer an insult to common sense. 
It would be instructive, if the facts could be ascer- 
tained, to know how many of those who attend the 
average prayer-meeting do so because they truly delight 
in it, how many because they wish to stand by and en- 
courage their pastor, and how many because they think 
it is, or may be, their duty. It would also be instruc- 
tive, if the facts could be ascertained, to know how 
many men are kept away by the fear of being called 
upon to engage actively in the exercises, and how many 
remain at home because they have learned by experi- 
ence that the average prayer-meeting is a dreary place 
to weary men — one which bores without benefiting them. 
We fear that, if the facts were known as they relate to 
these two points, the average prayer-meeting would find 
itself in very sorry standing. When men go to a relig- 
7* 



154 Every -Day Topics. 

ious meeting, of any sort, they go to be reinforced, or 
refreshed, or instructed. How much of any one of these 
objects can be realized in such a meeting as we have de- 
scribed ? How much of the still higher object of spon- 
taneous, joyous worship can be secured, by listening to 
the painful blundering of some pious and conscientious 
layman ? Is it not the truth that the average prayer- 
meeting is a sad mockery of both God and man ? 

Can it be possible that the Almighty Father of us all 
is pleased with an offering so little spontaneous, so far 
from joyous, so painful in its exercises, and so unprofit- 
able in its counsels as this ? If, once a week, a whole 
church would come together joyfully, and sing their 
songs, and pray their prayers, and speak their thoughts, 
and commune with one another on the great topic which 
absorbs them, that would be a meeting worth having. 
But how would such a meeting compare with the dead 
drag of the average prayer-meeting ? It would compare 
as life compares with death, as beauty with deformity. 
So utterly valueless, to all human apprehension, are the 
prayer-meetings carried on by some churches, that it 
may well be questioned whether they are not rather a 
detriment than an advantage, a harm rather than a help, 
to the regular work of the pastors, and the spiritual pros- 
perity of those whom they lead and teach. 

There is something to be said for the layman in this 
connection, which will leave his piety unimpugned. In 
the first place he labors at an absorbing employment. 
He goes to the meeting utterly weary, and without the 
slightest preparation of heart or brain for any active 
participation in its exercises. He needs help, and does 
not feel capable of offering any. He is empty of his 
vitality, and needs to be refreshed, and diverted from 
the currents of thought in which his trade or profession 
holds him. Again, as a rule, he is unused to public 



Christian Practice. 155 

speech of any sort. It is impossible for him to lose the 
consciousness that he is speaking ; and, becoming criti- 
cal upon himself, his spontaneity, and all the good that 
comes of it, are lost. He sinks to his seat at last, hum- 
bled into the dust in the conviction that he has been en- 
gaged in a performance, in regard to whose success or 
failure he feels either gratification or mortified pride. It 
does him no good, and what is thus fruitless to him is, 
by force of its nature, fruitless of good to others. 

Shall the prayer-meeting be dropped when it ceases 
hopelessly to be the vivifying, spontaneous agency of 
worship and communion that it ought to be ? Can any 
change be made in its methods that will work a reforma- 
tion ? Can it be modified so as to avoid the evils we 
have indicated ? These are questions that we cannot 
answer, but it is not hard to see that a meeting conduct- 
ed entirely by the pastor is a thousand times better than 
a poor prayer-meeting, and that, if a prayer-meeting 
must be had, it is better to conduct it after some litur- 
gical form than to trust to the blind and blinding leadings 
of ignorant and half-distracted men. Spontaneous lay 
prayers in public are very nice in theory, but in practice, 
in the main, they are apples that break into ashes on the 
tongue. The opinion seems reasonable to us that any 
pastor, or body of pastors, who will present to the Ameri- 
can churches a liturgy for social use, so genial, so hearty, 
so full of the detail of common wants, and so apprecia- 
tive of the aspirations of the people, as to be the best 
possible expression of social worship and common peti- 
tions, will do more to lift the average prayer-meeting 
out of decrepitude, not to say disgrace, than can be done 
by any other means. If non-Episcopal Protestants wish 
to learn why it is that the Episcopal Church makes con- 
verts with such comparative ease, they need not go out- 
side of our suggestion for their information. 



156 Every-Day Topics. 

Speaking Disrespectfully of the Equator/ 

We heard a sermon recently on the subject of irrational 
reverence. It was suggestive and stimulating. It re- 
called to us the fact that one of the principal objects of 
American reverence is the Devil. There are multitudes 
who are shocked to hear his name mentioned lightly, and 
who esteem such mention profanity. We believe we do 
no injustice to millions of American people in saying that 
they have a genuine reverence for the being whom they 
believe to be the grand source and supreme impersona- 
tion of all evil. Of course this respectful feeling has 
grown out of the association of this being with religion, 
and is strong just in the proportion that the religion is 
irrational or superstitious. Now we confess to a lack of 
respect for the being who played our great grandmother 
a scurvy trick in the garden, and has always been the 
enemy of the human race ; and we have persistently en- 
deavored to bring him into contempt. It is harmful to 
the soul to entertain reverence for any being, real or 
imaginary, who is recognized to be wholly bad. That 
attitude of the man which defies, rather than deprecates, 
is a healthy one. If we have an incorrigible devil, who 
is not fit to live in the society of pure beings, let's hate 
him, and do what we can to ruin his influence. Let us, 
at least, do away with all irrational reverence for him 
and his name. 

There is a good deal of irrational reverence for the 
Bible. There are men who carry a Bible with them 
wherever they go, as a sort of protection to them. There 
are men who read it daily, not because they are truth- 
seekers, but because they are favor-seekers. To read it 
is a part of their duty. To neglect to read it would be 
to court adversity. There are men who open it at ran- 
dom to see what special message God has for them 



Christian Practice. 157 

through the ministry of chance or miracle. There are 
men who hold it as a sort of fetich, and bear it about 
with them as if it were an idol. There are men who see 
God in it, and see Him nowhere else. The wonderful 
words printed upon the starry heavens ; the music of the 
ministry that comes to them in winds and waves and the 
songs of birds ; the multiplied forms of beauty that smile 
upon them from streams and flowers, and lakes and 
landscapes ; the great scheme of beneficent service by 
which they receive their daily bread and their clothing 
and shelter— all these are unobserved, or fail to be rec- 
ognized as divine. In short, there is to them no expres- 
sion of God except what they find in a book. And this 
book is so sacred that even the form of language into 
which it has been imperfectly translated is sacred. They 
would not have a word changed. They would frown upon 
any attempt to examine critically into the sources of the 
book, forgetting that they are rational beings, and that 
one of the uses of their rational faculties is to know 
whereof they affirm, and to give a reason for the hope 
and faith that are in them. It is precisely the same irra- 
tional reverence that the Catholic has for his church and 
his priest. 

The irrational reverence for things that are old is 
standing all the time in the path of progress. Old forms 
that are outlived, old habits that new circumstances have 
outlawed, old creeds which cannot possibly contain the 
present life and thought and opinion, old ideas whose 
vitality has long been expended — these are stumbling- 
blocks in the way of the world, yet they are cherished 
and adhered to with a reverential tenderness that is due 
only to God. A worn-out creed is good for nothing but 
historical purposes, and, when those are answered, it 
ought to go into the rag-bag. Forgetting those things 
which are behind, the wise man will constantly reach 



158 Every -Day Topics. 

toward those that are before. The past is small ; the 
future is large. We travel toward the dawn, and every 
man who reverences the past, simply because it is the 
past, worships toward the setting sun, and will find him- 
self in darkness before he is aware. Of all the bondage 
that this world knows, there is none so chilling or so 
killing as that which ties us to the past and the old. We 
wear out our coats and drop them ; we wear out our 
creeds and hold to them, glorying in our tatters. 

There is even an irrational reverence for the Almighty 
Father of us all. We can, and many of us do, place 
Him so far away from us in His inaccessible Majesty, 
we clothe Him with such awful attributes, we mingle 
so much fear with our love, that we lose sight entirely 
of our filial relation to Him — lose sight entirely of the 
tender, loving, sympathetic, Fatherly Being, whom the 
Master has revealed to us. 

In the sermon to which we have alluded, the preacher 
quoted Coleridge's definition of reverence, which makes 
it a sentiment formed of the combination of love and 
fear. We doubt the completeness of the definition. 
Certainly, fear has altogether too much to do with our 
reverence, but if perfect love casteth out fear, where is 
the reverence ? That is an irrational reverence which 
lies prostrate before a greatness that it cannot compre- 
hend, and forgets the goodness, the nature of which, at 
least, it can understand. That is an irrational reverence 
which always looks up, and never around — which is 
always in awe, and never in delight — which exceedingly 
fears and quakes, and has no tender raptures — which 
places God at a distance, and fails to recognize Him in 
the thousand forms that appeal to our sense of beauty, 
and the thousand small voices that speak of His imme- 
diate presence. 



Christian Practice. 159 

Christianity and Color. 

No American of ordinary habits of observation can 
have failed to notice that in those sects in which much 
is made of religious emotion, and the policy of powerful 
public appeals to feeling is pursued, the moralities of life 
are at a discount. The same fact is evident in those 
communities where dogma and doctrine form the staple 
of religious teaching and religious life. If any one will 
take up the early colonial records of New England, he 
will be surprised and shocked at the amount of gross 
immorality which he will find recorded there. Rigidity 
of doctrine, the fulmination of the most terrific punish- 
ments in the future life, the passage and the execution 
of the most searching and definitive laws against every 
form of social vice, go hand in hand with every form of 
vice. There was adultery in high places and adultery 
in low. Slander held high carnival. Common scolds 
were almost too common to be noteworthy. In brief, it 
seems that a religion which makes most of its orthodoxy, 
or most of its frames and emotions of mind, is a religion 
most divorced from morality. A man who is told that 
the genuineness of his religion depends mainly upon the 
orthodoxy of his faith, or mainly upon the raptures of his 
mental experience, is either partly demoralized by his 
reception of the statement, or specially unfitted to meet 
the temptations of his life. 

The negro has been supposed to be particularly sus- 
ceptible to religious influences. He is as fond of relig- 
ion as he is of music ; and we fear that he is fond of it 
in very much the same way. It is no slander to say 
that a large proportion of the religious life of the negro 
is purely emotional, and that a large proportion of the 
negroes of the United States have never thoroughly as- 
sociated, either in their theories or their practical life, 



160 Every -Day Topics, 

religion with morality. The typical negro preacher is a 
" tonguey," loud-mouthed man, who appeals in his own 
fashion to the crowd before him ; and the more he can 
work them up to great excitement, and wild and noisy 
demonstrations of feeling, the better he is pleased. In 
portions of the South there are orgies connected with 
the religious meetings of the negroes which are too ab- 
surd, too ridiculous, too heathenish, to be mentioned by 
one who reverently remembers in whose sacred name 
they are performed. The yelling, dancing, pounding of 
backs, and insane contortions of these worshippers, are 
the same, in every essential respect, as they would be in 
the worship of a fetich. It is an amusement — a super- 
stitious amusement — which leaves no good result what- 
ever, and does no more toward nourishing their morality 
than the music of the fiddle to which they dance away 
the next night with equal enthusiasm. 

In a recent conversation with an intelligent clergy- 
man who has spent many years at the South — though a 
Northern man — we heard him declare, without reserve, 
that he did not know a negro in the whole Southern 
country whom he regarded as thoroughly trustworthy in 
matters of practical morality. Moreover, he declared 
that the worst men, as a class, among them, were the 
preachers themselves. By these latter he intended to 
indicate specially the self-appointed preachers — igno- 
rant, but bright men — who had secured the admiration 
and support of the masses. We asked him if he could 
not except from his very sweeping condemnation such 
among them as had been educated at the North. He 
shook his head, and replied that he knew some among 
, those, whose superb intellectual culture would grace the 
proudest race in the world, but never knew one of them 
whom he could trust — particularly with his neighbor's 
wife. Now, this man had had abundant opportunities 



Christian Practice. 161 

of observation, and spoke with candor and conscience. 
On a recent Sunday the writer listened to the out-door 
preaching, on Boston Common, of one of the finest and 
most amiable-looking specimens of the African race he 
ever saw, and what was he preaching about? Not pu- 
rity of character and life, not love of God and love of 
man, not duty to family and neighbor, but the theologi- 
cal machinery of salvation. It was the natural reaction 
from the emotional religion of his race, but it had no 
more in it for his race, in its moralities, than the fiery 
nonsense of his less educated brethren. 

Let us allow something for mistakes in the judgment 
and observation of the man whom we have quoted, and 
still we shall have sufficient ground for the declaration, 
that the negro in America, as a rule, holds his religion 
independent of morality — as something which either 
takes the place of it, or has nothing whatever to do with 
it, in his practical, every-day life. The fact is one full 
of grave suggestion, not only as it regards the future 
welfare of the race, but as regards the country in whose 
political fortunes he has become so important a factor. 
Much as the negro needs intellectual education, he needs 
moral education more. To learn to read will do little 
for him if, at the same time, his sense of right and 
wrong, his personal purity, his regard for the rights of 
others, his conscience, are not improved. If he cannot 
more fully perceive than he does to-day the relations of 
Christianity to character and conduct, his Christianity 
will rather debase than elevate him. In an enormous 
multitude of instances, all over the South, his religious 
rites are a travesty of Christian observances, and a 
libel on Christianity itself— a travesty and a libel that 
bring religion into contempt among thousands of ob- 
servers. 

It will be said that the loose notions of marriage that 



1 62 Every -Day Topics. 

prevailed during the negro's bondage, and the thefts in 
which he then justified himself, have a great deal to do 
with his present lack of moral sense. It is claimed that 
his education will lift him above his present religious 
teaching. Granted, and still we have the emotional na- 
ture of the negro left, and his natural tendency to emo- 
tional Christianity. It is one of the great problems with 
which we have to deal — to educate the conscience of 
the negro. To give him intelligence without this, is to 
make him more dangerous to himself and us than he is. 
Either a white man or a black man, with rights and no 
sense of righteousness, is a dangerous man. His politi- 
cal power is easily bought and readily sold in the mar- 
ket, he is led with awful facility into unlawful combina- 
tions, he becomes a social curse in every community. 
The first special aim, in all our efforts to raise the negro 
from his degradation, should be directed to his morals. 
This must be mainly done among the young, and in 
schools ; and any teacher who is not competent to this 
work has no calling among the Africans, and, if he be- 
longs to the North, he had better come home. 

Sunday in Great Cities. 

Of the importance of the observance of Sunday, in 
the vital economy of the American people, there is no 
longer any doubt. With all the periodical rest it brings 
us, we still find ourselves overworked ; and the wrecks 
of paralysis are strewn around us on every hand. With- 
out it, we should find ourselves despoiled of our most 
efficient and reliable safeguard in the dangers which be- 
set the paths of business enterprise. As a matter of 
economy, therefore — as a conservator of health and life 
and the power to work — the Sunday, observed strictly 
as a day of rest from secular labor, is of the utmost im- 



Christian Pi'actice. 163 

portance. We cannot afford to-day, and we shall never 
be able to afford, to give it up to labor, either in city or 
country. Experience has settled this point, and yielded 
upon every hand its testimonies to the wisdom of the 
divine institution. As a measure of social, moral and 
physical health — as a measure of industrial economy — 
the ordination of a day of periodical rest like that which 
Sunday brings us would come legitimately within the 
scope of legislation. If we had no Sunday, it would be 
the duty of the State to ordain one ; and as we have it, 
it is equally the duty of the State to protect it, and con- 
firm to the people the material and vital benefits which 
it is so well calculated to secure. 

There are certain other facts connected with the ob- 
servance of Sunday in America which are quite as well 
established as the one to which we have alluded, the 
most prominent of which is, that the high morality and 
spirituality of any community depends uniformly on its 
observance of Sunday. We do not believe there is a 
deeply religious community in America, of any name, 
that does not observe one day in seven as a day spe- 
cially devoted to religion. The earnest Christian or Jew- 
ish workers everywhere are Sabbath-keepers, in their 
separate ways and days. It is very well to talk about 
an " every-day Christianity," and better to possess and 
practise it ; but there certainly is precious little of it 
where Sunday is not observed. The religious faculties, 
sentiments, and susceptibilities, under all schemes and 
systems of religion, are the subjects of culture, and im- 
peratively need the periodical food and stimulus which 
come with Sunday institutions and ministries. The 
prevalence and permanence of a pure Christianity in 
this country depend mainly on what can be done for 
them on Sunday. If the enemies of Christianity could 
wipe it out, they would do more to destroy the power of 



1 64 Every -Day Topics. 

the religion they contemn than all the Renans and 
Strausses have ever done, or can do. They understand 
this, and their efforts will be directed to this end, through 
every specious protest, plea, and plan. 

The most religious and earnest of the Catholic clergy 
of Europe lament the fact that the Sunday of their 
church and their several countries is a day of amuse- 
ment. They see, and they publicly acknowledge, that 
without the English and American Sunday they work 
for the spiritual benefit of their people at a sad disad- 
vantage. It is this European Sunday, which we are told 
is to come to America at last through her foreign popu- 
lation. We hope not. We would like to ask those who 
would rejoice in its advent, how much it has done for the 
countries where it exists. Go to Italy, France, Spain, 
Ireland — to any part of Germany, Catholic or Infidel, 
and find if possible any people so temperate, pure, 
chaste, truthful and benevolent as the Sunday-keeping 
communities of America. It cannot be done. The 
theatre, the horse-race, the ball, the cricket-ground, the 
lager-beer saloon, have nothing in them that can take 
the place of the institutions of religion. They are es- 
tablished and practised in the interest of the animal, and 
not at all in the interest of the moral and intellectual 
side of humanity. They can neither build up nor purify. 
They minister only to thoughtlessness and brutality. So 
much, then, seems obvious : ist. — That we cannot do 
without Sunday as a day of physical and mental rest ; 
2d. — That, either as a consequence or a concomitant, 
moral and spiritual improvement goes always with the 
observance of Sunday as a religious day ; and, 3d. — 
That Sunday, as a day of amusement simply, is profit- 
less to the better and nobler side of human nature and 
human life. 

Now, the questions relating to the opening of parks, 



Christian Practice. 165 

libraries, reading-rooms, etc., in great cities on Sunday, 
are not moral or religious questions at all — they are pru- 
dential, and are to be settled by experiment. It is to 
be remembered that there are large numbers of the 
young in all great cities who have no home. They sleep 
in little rooms, in which in winter they have no fire, and 
can never sit with comfort. They are without congenial 
society. They have not the entree of other homes ; and 
they must go somewhere, and really need to go some- 
where. Christian courtesy does much to bring them 
into Christian association, and ought to do a thousand 
times more. The least it can do is to open all those 
doors which lead to pure influences and to the entertain- 
ment of the better side of human nature. A man who 
seeks the society of good books, or the society of those 
who love good books, or chooses to wander out for the 
one look at nature and the one feast of pure air which 
the week can give him, is not to be met by bar or ban. 
Whatever feeds the man and ignores or starves the brute 
is to be fostered as a Christian agency. The Sabbath 
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. That 
is not religion, but pagan slavery, which makes of Sun- 
day a penance and a sacrifice. It is better that a man 
be in a library than alone all the time. It is better that 
he wander in the park than even feel the temptation to 
enter a drinking-saloon or a brothel. The Sunday horse- 
car is justified in that it takes thousands to church who 
could hardly go otherwise. The open library is justified 
in that it is a road which leads in a good direction. The 
roads devoted to Sunday amusement lead directly away 
from the Christian Church. All pure ways are ways that 
tend upward, toward God and heaven. 



1 66 Every -Day Topics. 

American Sunday-Schools. 

Let us have some honest talk about our Sunday- 
schools. Admitting that they are useful beyond our 
finite calculation, and that, as an agency in Christian civ- 
ilization, they stand in one of the places of highest im- 
portance, it will not be amiss to inquire whether there 
may not be in them some tendencies to evil, some wrong 
ideas, some misconceptions of the highest end to be 
sought in their operation and management. 

Let us touch the heart of the matter in our opening 
statement. We know of no good reason for sending a 
child to a Sunday-school, or of seeking to bring a child 
into a Sunday-school, except to make a Christian of 
him. We are in the habit of speaking of Sunday- 
schools as "nurseries of the Church;" and no phrase 
could be happier in defining that which is undeniably 
the first object of a Sunday-school — namely, Christian 
nurture. There is a class of Sunday-schools, in large 
cities mainly, that need instruction in the facts of Chris- 
tianity ; but it is true that the great mass of children in 
the Sunday-schools of the United States know the story 
familiarly, and need nothing so much as to be religiously 
impressed and brought consciously, and by a sweet and 
solemn choice, into direct relation with the great object 
of worship, and into a voluntary and loving allegiance to 
Him. The observations of a life of observation have 
taught us that the principal good results of Sunday- 
schools come not from enterprising and gifted superin- 
tendents, come not from interesting and funny story- 
tellers, who are known technically as " Sunday-school 
men," come not from singing sacred words to Yankee 
Doodle, or of frivolous words to still more frivolous 
tunes, come not from huge feats of memory in the re- 
hearsal of long chapters of Holy Writ, come from none 



Christian Practice. 167 

of the numberless tricks resorted to for enthralling ju- 
venile interest and exciting juvenile ambition and love 
of praise, but from the personal influence of Christian 
teachers, who, knowing their scholars intimately and 
loving them tenderly, lead them by the power of their 
love and the light of their own Christian character into 
the adoption of a Christian life. 

Nothing is more notorious than the fact that a man 
may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his 
mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest 
effect upon his character and aims. It is there, but it 
fructifies nothing. It has less influence than the multi- 
plication table. A community may be — and often is — 
thoroughly intelligent in everything relating to the facts 
and claims of Christianity, and, at the same time, al- 
most hopelessly frivolous or vicious. It follows, then, that 
a Sunday-school which does no more than teach fails to 
do that thing without which teaching is of very little ac- 
count. The power of a Sunday-school to make Chris- 
tians of its scholars resides almost entirely in its teach- 
ers. If they are Christians indeed, and are possessed 
by the Christian's love of the young natures committed 
to their keeping and leading, they will never rest until, 
by all practical means, they have endeavored to lead 
them to the adoption of that life which is the highest 
placed before the choice of humanity. The best minds 
and finest spirits of a church ought always to be in the 
Sunday-school. The highest office of this age, or of any 
age, is that of a Christian teacher; and a man who can 
look with contempt upon the office of Sunday-school 
teacher, or regard it as detracting in any degree from 
his personal dignity, betrays inevitably the feebleness of 
his conceptions and the shallowness of his piety. How 
many churches are there in which there are not men and 
women who look upon Sunday-school teaching as a bur- 



1 68 Every-Day Topics. 

den and a bore ? How many Sunday-schools are there in 
which there are not teachers who stand week after week 
before their classes, refusing themselves to receive and 
profess the religion whose truths they undertake to im- 
part? 

With such views as these — stated or indicated — our 
readers will conclude that we have not a very favorable 
opinion of much of the machinery used in Sunday- 
schools. The children are not to blame for demanding 
excitement and amusement, because these have been 
the means resorted to for bringing them into Sunday- 
school and keeping them there. Indeed, the impres- 
sion is quite prevalent among the children of some 
schools that they are conferring a great favor on super- 
intendent and teachers by their attendance. If they 
cannot get funny books, or premiums, or hear funny 
stories, or have picnics, or Christmas presents, or some 
visible reward, they threaten to leave the school — either 
to stay out entirely, or go to some other school where 
they can obtain what they demand. So all sorts of 
means are resorted to to keep up excitement, and, in 
the meantime, they get no religious impression what- 
ever. The tunes they sing amuse them, but nurse no 
spirit of devotion. The books they read and the stories 
they hear interest them, but leave no result except hun- 
ger for more excitement of the same kind. The premi- 
ums they win inspire their pride in a sort of excellence 
which spares little room for Christian humility. In one 
way and another, the opportunities of making a deep 
and good impression upon character and life are frit- 
tered away, and the children are no better prepared to 
enter upon life and the resistance of its multiplied temp- 
tations to evil than if they had never seen a Sunday- 
school. 

In our judgment there is a vast amount of machinery 



Christian Practice. 169 

instituted by professional Sunday-school men that is the 
veriest humbug. They have complicated that which is 
unspeakably simple. They have undertaken to do that 
by artificial processes and by ingenious contrivances 
which can only be done well through the instincts of a 
loving heart and a heaven-enkindled zeal. The touch 
of a gentle hand in the exhibition of a personal affec- 
tion and interest is worth ten thousand times more than 
the most elaborate exposition of Bible truth on a black- 
board. If superintendents and teachers possess com- 
mon sense, and know exactly what they wish to do, and 
wish first and most to make Christians of their children, 
let them follow their own methods, and leave the profes- 
sional methods to those who need them. 

Shakerism. 

Something has been written recently on the public 
worship of the Shakers, which has not been relished by 
that eccentric sect ; and we hear that they have shut 
out the world from their social religious gatherings. We 
are glad they have taken this step. No poorer way of 
spending Sunday was probably ever found than that of 
attending a Shaker meeting ; and when it is remembered 
that no one from " the world " ever looked in upon such 
a gathering with any motive but that of curiosity, it will 
be seen that the Shakers themselves have lost nothing 
by the change. They probably never made a convert by 
their exhibition, or excited in the minds of the strange 
witnesses of their worship any feelings but those of 
mingled wonder and pity. If other sentiments than 
these were ever roused, we fear they were not in conso- 
nance with the spirit of the day. But they have a right 
to worship as they will, and to do it without intrusion 
and disturbance. If they find their way to the Good 
Vol. I.— 8 



170 Every -Day Topics. 

Father by a road that seems so very strange to us, it is 
entirely their business, or a business between them and 
their Maker. If a worldly man is moved to mirth by 
their methods, why, they must wonder and pity too, and 
not get angry about it. This thin-skinned sensitiveness 
to frank and honest comment will never do. It is not 
only a sign of weakness, but a proof of the conscious- 
ness of it. 

It is curious to see how quickly the marriage relation 
begins to be tampered with when any body of religion- 
ists begins to get new light, or light additional to, or in- 
dependent of, the Christian revelation. The Mormon 
gets new light, and forthwith he gets new wives. The 
Shaker gets new light, and straightway he divorces him- 
self from womankind. The Spiritualists of the baser 
sort get new light, and adopt the most free and easy 
policy of " touch and go." Always with new light this 
institution of Christian marriage shows, by its perturba- 
tions, how central and vital it is in our social system. 
To the observant philosopher this matter of marriage 
has become a sort of test or touchstone in the examina- 
tion of every new scheme of social and religious life ; 
and it may safely be calculated that any scheme which 
interferes with Christian marriage — any scheme which 
interferes with its prevalence and freedom, or reflects 
upon its honor and purity, or undermines its sacred- 
ness, or cheapens its obligations — is either intentionally 
or mistakenly unchristian ; sometimes the former, often 
the latter. 

The assumption of the Shaker is that he leads a purer 
life than the world around him, in consequence of the 
fact that none marry or are given in marriage within the 
circle of his sect. He acknowledges that the society of 
woman in the intimate relations of a wife would be in- 
expressibly sweet to him. He acknowledges that it 



Christian Practice. 171 

would be delightful to be surrounded by his own chil- 
dren, and that the loves of wife and children would be 
full of pleasure and satisfaction to him. All this he sees 
and talks about with candid and respectful outsiders. 
Indeed, it is this fact that gives the great significance to 
his life and his religion. Destroy the idea lying in the 
representative Shaker's mind, that he merits something 
for the voluntary surrender of these loves and satisfac- 
tions, and his Shakerism has gone to ruin. He is to get 
something for his self-denial. He is to win the favor of 
Heaven, and a high seat in heaven itself, as a reward 
for his hardships. He lays up treasure by his sacrifices. 
That is Shakerism, pure and simple. That is Shaker- 
ism in the kernel. It is the central, vitalizing idea of 
the system. Modes of worship, and supplementary rev- 
elations, and industrial policies, do not make Shakers. 
It is the thought that by surrendering the sweet sinful- 
ness of marriage, and undertaking the " angel life" in 
this world, he achieves pre-eminence among the saints, 
that makes the Shaker, and replenishes his little sect 
from year to year. 

In this assumption of the Shaker lies a gross insult to 
his own father and mother, and to all fatherhood and 
motherhood in the world. Even the virgin mother of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was not set apart from 
marriage, and all that came of marriage, by the divine 
office to which she was appointed ; and He Himself 
ministered to the pleasures of a marriage feast which he 
attended with his married Mother. Many, many times he 
called himself the "bridegroom," and the marriage re- 
lation was the favorite among his figures for illustrating 
the pure and loving intimacy and sympathy between 
Himself and His Church. The Shaker is horribly mis- 
taken. Men and women were made to live together in 
Christian marriage ; and the experience of the world has 



172 Every-Day Topics. 

proved that it is not those who live out of wedlock who 
live purely. The unnatural position of the Shaker con- 
centrates his thoughts upon this subject, and we venture 
to say that it occupies more thought, and more damaging 
thought, among Shakers, and celibate priests, and monks 
and nuns, than among any other people of equal educa- 
tion and equally good principles in the world. Human 
nature is human nature, and the strongest human passion 
cannot be denied its legitimate object without a constant 
protest that destroys personal peace and wars perpetu- 
ally upon the purity of the mind. It is useless for the 
Shaker to say that he lives more purely for his celibacy. 
We know better, and the world knows better. He lives 
a life of torture and of meagre satisfaction, and he knows 
it ; and if he did not think that he was in some way 
making something by it, he would, save for his sensitive 
personal pride, forsake it. As it is, he simply starves 
himself and his dupes, and shuts himself off from per- 
sonal happiness and personal usefulness. Who is doing 
the Christian work of the world ? Is it the Shaker ? Not 
he. He draws the lines around him, and selfishly takes 
care of his own. His scheme of self-denial proves itself 
utterly selfish, in that it gives birth to no self-denying 
enthusiasms. He does not go out where men and women 
live, and work for the world, but he stays at home and 
works for himself. He has neither part nor lot in the 
great schemes for Christianizing mankind. This work, 
which he shuns, is done by those gross men and women 
who marry and are given in marriage. Why, there is 
more Christian heroism in the humble little household 
of the Methodist pioneer minister and his devoted wife, 
surrounded by their children and their humble flock, than 
all the Shaker establishments of the United States ever 
dreamed of. Are we to talk about such a family as being 
more impure and less saintly than those who hold them- 



Christian Practice. 173 

selves apart from each other, and spend their lives in 
fighting a passion which God made strong that his insti- 
tution of the family life might be well-nigh compulsory ? 
Out upon such nonsense ! The truth is, that the doc- 
trines of these people are an insult to the Christian 
world, and nothing but their failure to secure a wide 
adoption has kept them from being denounced. They 
have little influence in the world, and will have less as 
the world grows wiser and better. The best thing the 
Shakers can do is to pair off, and go to separate house- 
keeping. In their long association they have had rare 
opportunities for studying each other, and they must 
by this time understand their " affinities." There is no 
good reason why a Shaker should not have a wife, and 
there are ten thousand good reasons why he should, in- 
cluding those which concern his own personal purity, 
and the pleasure with which the Good Father regards 
the peace and the heart-satisfactions of his children. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 

The Outlook. 

IF any of our thoughtful readers have omitted the 
perusal of Dr. Blauvelt's articles on " Modern Scep- 
ticism," we beg them to go back and read every word 
of them. They will there obtain a view of the infidelity 
of the day, which will give them food for reflection, and 
suggestions for action. No papers published during the 
last five years have presented the extent and nature of 
modern scepticism with such faithfulness as these. They 
ought to attract universal attention, and summon the 
whole Christian host to battle under leaders who know 
something about the basis of Christianity besides the 
traditional" apologies." It is not a form of Christianity 
that is now in question. It is not a question between 
sects. It is a question which involves Christianity itself, 
and the authority of the Bible. Have we a divine relig- 
ion at all ? Is Christianity anything better than Bud- 
dhism, or of any higher authority ? If the Christian opti- 
mist supposes that these questions are to be met and 
decided by the " pooh-pooh" of sectaries, or the dicta 
of professional teachers, or the resolutions of conferences 
and councils, he is very much mistaken. We are in- 
clined to think that the pulpit and the distinctively re- 
ligious press will have very little to do with the matter, 
and that the question will at last be settled where it has 



The Church of the Future. 175 

been unsettled. The pulpit can do very little in any- 
direct struggle with infidelity, because — not to mention 
other reasons — infidelity does not come within its reach. 
The religious press can do very little, because infidelity 
does not and will not read it. Both these powers must 
be content to preach Christianity as well as they can, 
and leave the struggle to be decided among those who 
have a common desire to get at the truth, whatever that 
may be. 

It may as well be understood among Christian men 
and women that they are every day doing that which 
brings their religion under suspicion with the unbelieving 
world. The world does not see the fruits of that divine 
influence which is claimed for the Christian religion by 
its professors. Nothing is more notorious than that the 
educated men of France, Italy, and Spain are infidel ; 
and nothing has been better calculated to make them so 
than the whole policy of the Catholic Church in those 
countries. They have seen a populace kept in ignorance 
and poverty through many generations by a Christian 
Church. They have seen that populace fed with tradi- 
tions, machine-miracles, shows, processions, humbugs, 
by a priesthood that is foolish if it knows no better, and 
knavish if it does know better ; they have seen that 
priesthood taking side with tyranny against every popu- 
lar struggle for liberty and liberal institutions ; they 
have seen that priesthood grasping at wealth and power, 
and intriguing for temporal influence all over the world. 
This is the Christianity they have seen ; it is all they 
have seen ; and their conclusions, when made against 
the Catholic Church, are made against Christianity it- 
self. Does anybody blame them ? Not we. 

The influences of the prevalent form of Christianity in 
England are very little better than in the nations men- 
tioned. The world looks on and sees livings bought and 



1 7 6 Every -Day Topics. 

sold like commissions in the army — places made in the 
church for younger sons — wine-drinking, pleasure-lov- 
ing men in the pulpit ; and then, when it sees any action, 
it is with regard to candles, and vestments, and rites and 
ceremonies that have no more vital relation to the re- 
demption of mankind and the service of God than they 
have to the policy of the Czar in Turkey. Is it supposed 
that men of common sense do not and cannot see 
through all this stuff and nonsense ? Four hundred of 
these clergymen have just petitioned for what they call 
" sacramental confession." Drifting toward Romanism, 
grasping after new and old machinery, busied only with 
husks and human inventions, quarrelling over baubles, 
excommunicating their own free thinkers and free speak- 
ers, obsequious to worldly grandeurs, mingling in poli- 
tics, frowning upon nonconformists as social inferiors, 
the great majority of the English clergy are doing what 
they can to manufacture infidels out of all Englishmen 
who do their own thinking. 

And here in America, how much better are we doing ? 
We fritter away our energies and waste our substance in 
building costly churches for the rich, in multiplying sects 
and keeping up the differences between them, and in 
aping the wretched religious fooleries of the Old World. 
Our organization into a hundred religious sects amounts 
to the disorganization of Christianity. There are thou- 
sands of towns lying religiously dead to-day because there 
is not Christianity enough in them to unite in obtaining 
the services of a minister who has brains enough to teach 
them ; and, as a rule, there are from three to six relig- 
ious societies in all these towns — starveling churches — 
monuments only to the ambition of the sects which they 
represent. The world looks on and scoffs. The world 
looks on and recognizes the lack of power in Christianity, 
or of such Christianity as it sees, to unify the church in 



The Church of the Future. IJJ 

feeling and effort ; and it learns only contempt for it. 
Every pulpit, as a rule, is a party pulpit. Every religious 
press is a party press — published in the interest of a sect 
and supported by it. So unusual is the spectacle of vari- 
ous bodies of Christians coming together for the accom- 
plishment of a common Christian purpose, that it is noted 
as something remarkable, and pointed at with self-com- 
placent boasting. We have fashionable churches, and 
churches made attractive by music that costs enough to 
support Christian teachers in half-a-dozen barren districts, 
and enough of the exhibition of a worldly spirit to show 
to keenly observing outsiders that the Christian spirit of 
self-sacrifice and the Christian faith in the hereafter are 
not in us — are hardly in the best of us. 

We would not be harsh, but we ask, in all candor, if 
there is not in every Christian country enough in the as- 
pect of Christian people to make their religion seem a 
hollow pretence, a thing without vital power, a system 
not half believed in by those who profess it. Does not 
the world find us quarrelling about non-essential things, 
striving for sectarian precedence, and practically ignor- 
ing the fact that the world needs to be saved through 
simple faith in and following of Jesus Christ ? Really, 
when the scientist and the naturalist come, with their 
scalpels and crucibles and blow-pipes, and tell us they 
will believe in nothing they cannot see and weigh and 
measure, there is but little left for them to do. Whose 
fault is it that they find their work so easy ? Why is it 
that there is such a flutter when they speak, except that 
those who profess to be Christians do not half believe in 
Christianity, and have no rational comprehension of the 
basis of such belief as they possess ? 

Two things must come before scepticism will be over- 
thrown, viz.: ist. A perfect willingness to go into an 
examination of Christianity for the truth's sake alone. 
8* 



178 Every -Day Topics. 

Any man who is interested as a partisan, either for Chris- 
tianity or against it, is unfit for the investigation. So far 
as the claims of Christianity are to be settled by inves- 
tigation, they are to be settled by 7nen whose supreme de- 
sire is to find the truth, wherever it may lead or land 
them. 2d. Christianity must be better illustrated in life 
by those who profess it. When Christians everywhere are 
controlled by a love that takes in God and every human 
being ; when " divine service " consists of ministry to the 
poor and the suffering and not of clothes and candles ; 
when the Christian name is greater than all sectarian 
names and obliterates them all ; when benevolence is 
law, and humblest service is highest honor, and life be- 
comes divine, then scepticism will cease, and not till 
then. 

A Time to Speak : A Time to Keep Silence. 

The introductory words of the preface to Matthew 
Arnold's " Literature and Dogma" are these : " An ine- 
vitable revolution, of which we all recognize the begin- 
nings and signs, but which has already spread further 
than the most of us think, is befalling the religion in 
which we have been brought up." We wonder how far 
the American clergy have recognized these beginnings 
and signs. We wonder how far they are recognized in 
the theological schools, where the young men of the 
present day are trained for the Christian ministry. We 
wonder if, when they are recognized, they are published, 
or in any way prepared for. We wonder if the pulpit 
anywhere openly recognizes them, undertakes to lead the 
people safely through them, tries to occupy the new 
stand-point, and, while tossing aside the lumber of the 
old theologies, grasps firmly the vital truths of religion 
and proclaims them. 



The Church of the Future. 179 

If we were to judge by the hue-and-cry raised about 
certain articles that have appeared in this magazine, 
these beginnings and signs have not been recognized at 
all ; yet it is just as true in this country as in England, 
and just as true in England as for twenty-five years it 
has been in Germany, that this revolution is in progress. 
The old orthodox view of the Bible, as a plenarily in- 
spired book, from the first word of Genesis to the last 
of St. John's Revelation, is already forsaken by more 
minds than can be counted ; and, by necessity, with the 
relinquishment of this view, goes by the board a great 
mass of theology entirely dependent upon it for existence. 
The current popular ..theology cannot possibly be saved 
without saving the current and popular view of the Bible. 
They stand and fall together ; and it would be interest- 
ing to know how many of our theologians are shaping 
their systems and teachings by their new views of inspi- 
ration, and of the relative importance and authority of 
the different books that make up our sacred volume. 
Are we to go on, as a Christian people, until criticism 
has undermined our elaborate systems-, and those systems 
fall, carrying with them those simple, vital truths which 
the Bible most indubitably holds, and upon which depend 
the moral health and the salvation of the race ? 

Mr. Arnold says, "there is no surer proof of a narrow 
and ill-instructed mind than to think and uphold that 
what a man takes to be truth upon religious matters is 
always to be proclaimed. ' : Mr. Greg, in one of his 
"Judgments," finds serious fault with this proposition; 
but in one respect, at least, it is sound. For instance, 
we find that the Christian religion, as it is taught to-day, 
and has for many years been taught, is a purifying, ele- 
vating, saving influence among all men who in faith re- 
ceive, and, in life, practise it. So much we know — that, 
however false our theologies may be, and however incor- 



180 Every -Day Topics. 

rect our views of all that relates to God and man in their 
nature and relations, we hold enough of pure and vital 
truth to bring the hearts of men into sympathy with Jesus 
Christ, and their lives into consonance with his. Now, 
until a man has something as good to say — something 
more sound, simple, saving — better based, more easily 
comprehended, working larger and better results — let 
him keep silence with his doubts, and withhold his hand 
from destruction. Nothing is more basely cruel than 
the destruction of any system of religious life that has 
good in it, without having in hand something better to 
put in its place. The time for keeping silence is when 
one has nothing to put in place of that which his words 
are intended to destroy. We may not hold the truth in 
its purity, but we hold enough of it to make it invaluable, 
and until we can present it in a purer and a more fruitful 
form, so that those who may cut loose from their old be- 
lief shall have something to grasp that is better, it is well 
to hold the tongue and restrain the pen. 

The facts are, however, that the revolution is going 
on independent of the theologians and the religious 
teachers, and if they are doing anything about it they 
are fighting it. The result will probably, and most nat- 
urally, be a reign of infidelity, out of which, after weary, 
wretched years, we shall slowly emerge, with our Chris- 
tianity purged of its extraneous doctrines, and with a 
new class of religious teachers, who will look back upon 
the present position as one of gross blindness and fatal 
fatuity. 

What we want to-day is teachers who are capable of 
comprehending the situation ; who have learned what 
irreparable havoc has been made in some of their old 
beliefs ; who, casting out all those superstitious notions 
of the Bible that have made it half-talisman, half-fetich 
to millions of men, women and children, can grasp the 



The Church of the Future. 181 

history, meanings and uses of the book, get at its cen- 
tral, saving truths, and proclaim them. There is no 
question that Christianity is as independent of our old 
ideas of the Bible as it is independent of our ideas of 
the Koran, or our ideas of any book or anything what- 
soever. We have in the Bible, when we find it, the true 
religion ; but, when we make the existence of that relig- 
ion dependent upon our ideas of the Bible, we do it the 
cruellest wrong that we can inflict upon it. 

And that, precisely, is the danger to-day. The peo- 
ple, having been taught to associate the religion of the 
Bible with a certain view of inspiration, imagine that re- 
ligion stands or falls with that view. There could not 
be a more natural or logical result of the teachings of 
the last three hundred years than this ; and if religious 
teachers are not ready with their answer when the time 
comes to speak — and that time in a great many com- 
munities is now — a crop of infidels will be the result. 
The growing inattention to religion among the more in- 
telligent masses, the lack of religious faith in the literary 
class, the enmity — sometimes coarse and always ag- 
gressive — of the scientists, show that the time to speak, 
and to speak in earnest, has come. But the speaking 
must be done from the new stand-point, and with a 
thorough recognition of the modifications that science 
and criticism have wrought in the materials and com- 
binations that have entered into the structure of our 
old systems of faith and opinion. The old machinery 
and the old doctrine will not avail in this fight. It is 
precisely those that are the subjects of dissent. A 
teacher who has nothing but these with which to meet 
the foes of religion may as well retire from the field of 
conflict. 



1 82 Every-Day Topics. 

Why Not? 

In a little book, by Rev. Dr. Dorus Clarke, we find 
the sentiment of Christian unity, so popular during the 
late meetings of the Evangelical Alliance in New York 
— so frequently expressed, and so cordially responded 
to by those in attendance — supplemented by a practical 
proposition which demands from the Christian public a 
candid consideration. Dr. Clarke declares the exist- 
ence of sects to be a reproach and not a commendation 
of Christianity — that "it was not so in the beginning, 
will not be so in the end, and ought not to be so now." 
Then, after disposing of the usual apologies made for 
the creation and preservation of sects, he declares that 
Christ founded a church, and not a sect, and that the 
unity for which He prayed was an open and organic 
one, as well as a spiritual one — that the world might 
know that the Father had sent Him. 

The larger part of Dr. Clarke's book is devoted to an 
effort to show how all sects may resolve themselves into 
one — or, rather, how all the sects may become one 
church — at least, all those who accept the Bible as the 
authentic and authoritative Word of God. We should 
mar His work by undertaking to condense it ; so we 
leave our readers to examine it in detail in the book it- 
self, while we allude to the obstacles that stand in the 
way of the consummation so devoutly to be desired. 

Christianity itself is not responsible for one of these 
obstacles. They exist entirely in the minds of men. 
As we have declared elsewhere and often, the simple 
facts that the different evangelical sects recognize each 
other as Christians, and rejoice in unity of spirit, make 
every possible apology for sectarianism an absurdity. 
They are an open confession that nothing essential to 
Christianity divides them, and keeps them divided — an 



The Church of the Ftiture. 183 

open confession that sectarian divisions are based upon 
non-essential differences of belief, policy, and practice. 
The day is past for defending sectarianism from the di- 
vine or Christian side of the question. Christianity will 
have nothing to do with such a defence. The founder 
of our religion never founded a sect, and the religion it- 
self is not responsible for one that exists. So far as the 
Church exists it is spiritually a unit in the eye of Him 
who founded it. That it is divided into parties which 
compete with one another, and quarrel with one an- 
other, and regard one another with jealousy, and are 
full of party spirit, is man's affair entirely, for which he 
is to be held responsible, and for which he is most in- 
dubitably blameworthy. 

The grand obstacles that stand in the way of organic 
union are, first, a failure to appreciate the necessity and 
desirableness of such a union, and, second, the estab- 
lished sectarian organizations and interests. Now in 
our political affairs we accept the adage : " In union 
there is strength," as our axiom. No one thinks of 
questioning it. A number of free and independent 
States could gather, as the Evangelical Alliance did, in 
a representative assembly, on a common basis of love 
of, and devotion to, liberty. The members could be 
one in spirit, and every time they spoke of liberty they 
would meet the applause of the multitude. Yet, when 
these members should separate, each would go to his 
own, and exercise his liberty in building up his own, 
even at the expense of his neighbor. The fact that all 
believe in liberty forms no practical union. A union 
which lives alone on a sympathy of this sort would not 
make a nation, and would not be considered of any 
practical value among the nations of the world. The 
fact that all these States are founded on the principle of 
liberty and that all can sympathize in the love, and 



1 84 Every-Day Topics. 

praise, and enjoyment of liberty, does not save them 
from selfishness and jealousy, and competition and 
quarrel ; while against a common foe they present no 
united front, and no concentration of united power. 
The analogy between the position of such States and 
the Protestant Christian sects, in the aspect in which we 
present them, is perfect. The fact that these sects have 
a common basis of sympathy, in that love of the Master 
on which they are founded, does not make them an or- 
ganic Christian church, in any open, appreciable, practi- 
cal sense. It does not restrain them from controversies, 
quarrels, and competitions, or the outlay of that power 
upon and against each other which ought to be united, 
and brought to bear upon the common enemy. All sec- 
tarian and party spirit in the Church is of the earth, 
earthy ; and is not only contemptible as a matter of 
policy, but criminal as a matter of principle. When all 
Christians become able to see it in this light — and they 
are thus regarding it more and more — the first grand 
obstacle to the obliteration of sects, and the organic 
union of the Church, will have been removed. 

The established sectarian organizations and interests 
will prove, we suppose, the most serious obstacles in the 
way of reform. The absolute abolition of all sectarian 
machinery, of all sectarian schools of theology, of all 
sectarian newspapers and magazines, the amalgamation 
of diverse habits and policies, the remanding of sectarian 
officials into the Christian ranks — officials many of, 
whom have found their only possibility of prominence ; 
through their adaptation to sectarian service — all this will 
involve a revolution so radical, will call for so much self- 
denial for the sake of a great, common cause, that the 
Christian world may well tremble before it, particularly 
when it sees in these obstacles something of the horrible J 
pit of selfishness into which sectarianism has plunged it. 



The Church of the Future. 185 

But this revolution can be effected, and it must be. It 
is foolish to say that the world is not ready for it. The 
laity are already far in advance of the clergy on this sub- 
ject ; and if the clergy, who are their recognized leaders, 
do not move soon in the right direction — soon and 
heartily — they will find a clamor about their ears which 
it will be well for them to heed. Through whatever ne- 
cessary convulsions, Protestant church unity will come. 
Men who have come to see that they are kept apart by 
no difference that touches vital Christianity, will not 
consent to remain divided. 

A free, enlightened, united, Protestant Christianity, 
arrayed against the repressive despotism, and the cor- 
rupting superstition of the Church of Rome, and against 
an unbelieving world — now puzzled and repelled by the 
differences among Christians — would be the grandest 
sight the world ever saw ; and men may as well stop 
praying for the millennium until they are ready to pray 
for that which must precede it. This first, and then 
purified, reformed, and enlightened Rome ; and then, 
the grand and crowning union of all ! 

How Much has been Gained ? 

Among the various important topics discussed by the 
Evangelical Alliance, which lately met in this city, there 
was none that awoke more interest or more genuine feel- 
ing than " Christian Unity." It was a topic which, un- 
der the circumstances, naturally came first to hand, and 
which accompanied the other topics all through the pro- 
gramme. It was recognized, indeed, as the root of the 
whole enterprise, and it gave occasion for the expression 
and demonstration of a great deal of true Christian feel- 
ing. More than that, the vast numbers of people who 
listened to these expressions, and the still larger num- 



1 86 Every -Day Topics. 

bers who read the report of them in the newspapers, 
gave a hearty " amen " to them all. 

Now, there ought to come out of all this some high 
practical result ; but we fear that it will be a long time 
coming. The first conclusion that the outside world ar- 
rives at, is, that the recognition of all the sects by each, 
as Christian, and as possessing real unity of spirit and 
life, is an open confession that nothing but non-essential 
questions and opinions keep the sects from actual unity. 
It is a declaration, emphasized in many notable ways, 
that all the sectarian quarrels of the past, and all the 
sectarian differences of the present, relate to matters 
that do not touch the essentials of Christian salvation 
and Christian character. If it does not mean exactly 
this, it does not mean anything. If it does mean exactly 
this, then all the words that were uttered with such a 
show of earnestness, and endorsed with such rounds of 
applause, were a cheat. So much has been gained ; 
and, this gained, we have a right to ask that the natural 
consequences of the step shall not be hindered or set 
aside. The first natural consequence is that no sect can 
claim the right to make a creed that shuts out a Chris- 
tian from its fellowship, and that every sect is bound to 
give the same latitude of opinion within its communion, 
on all non-essential questions, that it yields to other 
sects. Now let us see how much real sincerity there 
has been in the declarations so eloquently made and re- 
iterated and popularly responded to in the meetings of 
the Alliance ! 

Another natural consequence is the consolidation of 
all the sects in those localities where, by multiplication 
of sectarian churches, Christian work is feeble, and 
Christian enterprise is burdened with poverty and poi- 
soned by jealousies and competitions. We spent the 
last summer in a country town containing many families 



The Church of the Future. 187 

of intelligence and culture, supported by an interest- 
ing and thrifty husbandry. It has two Presbyterian 
churches, two meetings of Friends — the progressive and 
the orthodox — one Methodist church, and one Epis- 
copal. With all this machinery, it could hardly be 
claimed, that there was an active interest in religious 
affairs in the town, and the fact was patent that not one 
of those churches was either well attended or well sup- 
ported. They were feeble, struggling churches, every 
one of them ; and at least one of them went outside 
for funds to keep itself alive. There are ten thousand 
just such towns in America — sect-ridden, with feeble 
churches, usually a feeble and discouraged ministry, 
and a population grown dead for lack of unity in the 
church, and brains and culture and fervor in the pulpit. 
To build a large church in such a town as we have de- 
scribed, to fill its pulpit with a first-rate man, to bring 
all those churches together in a union that is actual 
and not sentimental, would be like bringing life to the 
dead. If so simple a thing as this cannot be done, for 
reasons that no sane man can dispute, then let the talk 
about Christian unity cease until we get a little farther 
along. 

It is claimed by those who represent the various sec- 
tarian organizations that the people are not ready for 
changes so radical as this would be. We know some- 
thing of the views and feelings of the people on this sub- 
ject, and we declare our conviction that they are half a 
century in advance of the clergy. It is not the people 
who are against actual Christian unity, where such unity 
is absolutely essential to Christian success. The sec- 
tarian organizations oppose it. The sectarian newspa- 
pers oppose it. The sectarian colleges and theological 
institutions oppose it. The sectarian clergy oppose it. 
It is from the church leaders that the opposition comes. 



1 88 Every -Day Topics. 

The entire sectarian machinery and policy of the vari- 
ous churches are against it. Can an instance be given 
where the governing sectarian influences have combined 
to reduce to harmony the denominational differences in 
a town, and bring all into one fold, under one shepherd? 
We shall be glad to hear of such an instance ; we cer- 
tainly never heard of one. 

The question may legitimately be asked of those who 
declare that the people are not ready for this change, 
whether they are doing anything to prepare them for it. 
Do they propose to do anything in the future ? If not, 
then we can arrive at a just estimate of the importance 
which actual Christian unity and sectarian success rel- 
atively obtain in their judgments and hearts. 

But it is claimed that there can be true unity of spirit 
among various denominations. We do not deny it. We 
believe there has been this among those who have con- 
stituted the membership of the Alliance, to a very great 
extent. We do not expect the destruction of denomi- 
nationalism for many years. With its present machinery, 
it can do much for Christianity in many places, particu- 
larly in large towns and cities ; but there is a multitude 
of places where it is a constant curse. Is denomina- 
tionalism willing to sink itself there ? If not, then there 
is no use in talking about Christian unity, or about the 
love of it, or about devotion to it. The people desire to 
see a practical embodiment of all this pleasantness be- 
tween the sects, in our own home affairs, as well as on 
foreign ground ; and they have a right to expect it. If 
they do not get it, we trust they will undertake the mat- 
ter for themselves. They have done this thing more 
than once, and they can do it again. 



The Church of the Future. 189 

Church-Debts. 

The way in which church edifices are built nowadays 
really necessitates a new formula of dedication. How 
would this read? "We dedicate this edifice to Thee, 
our Lord and Master ; we give it to Thee and Thy cause 
and kingdom, subject to a mortgage of one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars ($150,000). We bequeath it to our 
children and our children's children, as the greatest boon 
we can confer on them (subject to the mortgage afore- 
said), and we trust that they will have the grace and the 
money to pay the interest and lift the mortgage. Pre- 
serve it from fire and foreclosure, we pray Thee, and 
make it abundantly useful to Thyself — subject, of 
course, to the aforesaid mortgage." 

The offering of a structure to the Almighty, as the gift 
of an organization of devotees who have not paid for it, 
and do not own it, strikes the ordinary mind as a very 
strange thing, yet it is safe to say that not one church in 
twenty is built in America without incurring a debt, 
larger or smaller. A more commodious and a more 
elegant building is wanted. A subscription is made that 
will not more than half cover its cost, and money enough 
is borrowed to complete it. The whole, property is mort- 
gaged for all that it will carry, the financial authorities 
are saddled with a floating debt which they can only 
handle on their personal responsibility, and then comes 
taxation for interest, sufficient to keep the church always 
in distress. This sort of church enterprise is so common 
that it has become commonplace. The children of this 
world do not build railroads with capital stock paid in, 
but they build them with bonds. The children of light 
really do not seem to be less wise in their generation, in 
the way in which they build their churches. Indeed, we 
think the latter can give the former several points and 



190 Every -Day Topics. 

beat them ; for the paying success of a church depends 
upon more contingencies than the success of a railroad, 
and its bonds really ought not to sell for more than fifty 
cents on the dollar " flat." 

If we seem to make light of this subject, it is only 
for the purpose of showing how absurd a position the 
churches have assumed in relation to it. It is not a 
light subject ; it is a very grave one, and one which de- 
mands the immediate and persistent attention of all the 
churches until it shall be properly disposed of. In the 
first place, it is not exactly a Christian act for a body of 
men to contract a debt which they are not able to pay. 
It is hardly more Christian to refuse to pay a debt which 
they know they are able to discharge. It can hardly be 
regarded as a generous deed to bequeath a debt to suc- 
ceeding generations. The very foundations of the ordi- 
nary church-debt are rotten. They are rotten with poor 
morality, poor financial policy, and personal and sec- 
tarian vanity. Does any one suppose that these expen- 
sive and debt-laden churches were erected simply for 
the honor of the Master, and given to Him, subject to 
mortgage ? 

The results of building churches upon such an unsound 
basis are bad enough. The first result, perhaps, is the 
extinguishment of all church beneficence. The church- 
debt is the apology for denying all appeals for aid, from 
all the greater and smaller charities. A church sitting in 
the shadow of a great debt, is " not at home " to callers. 
They do not pay the debt, but they owe the money, and 
they are afraid they shall be obliged to pay it. The 
heathen must take care of themselves, the starving must 
go without bread, the widow and the fatherless must 
look to the God of the widow and the fatherless, the sick 
must pine, and the poor children grow up in vagabond- 
age, because of this awful church-debt. All the mean- 



The Church of the Future. 191 

ness in a church skulks behind the debt, of which it in- 
tends to pay very little, while all the nobleness feels really 
poor, because it is conscious that the debt is to be paid, 
if paid at all, by itself. 

Again, a church-debt is a scarecrow to all new-comers. 
A stranger, taking up his residence in any town, looks 
naturally for the church without a debt. He has a horror 
of debt of any sort, perhaps, and, as he had no responsi- 
bility for the church-debts he finds, he does not pro- 
pose voluntarily to assume any. So he stays away from 
the debt ridden church, and the very means that were 
adopted to make the edifice attractive, become, naturally 
and inevitably, the agents of repulsion. Debt ridden 
churches, with good preachers, do not need to look be- 
yond their debts for the reason which prevents more 
frequent and remunerative accessions to their number. 

Still again, church-debts are intolerable burdens to 
their ministers. They must " draw," in order that the 
debt may be paid. If they do not " draw," they must 
leave, to make place for a man who will. The yearly 
deficit is an awful thing for a sensitive minister to con- 
template, and puts him under a constant and cruel spur, 
which, sometimes swiftly and sometimes slowly, wears 
out his life. The feverish desire, on the part of churches, 
for brilliant or sensational preaching, is more frequently 
generated by the debt than by any other cause. In many 
instances the minister is forced into being a politician, a 
manager, an intriguer, a society-hunter, rather than a 
soul-seeker. This latter point is a painful one, and we 
do not propose to dwell upon it ; but the deference to 
the man of money, shown in some churches, is certainly 
very pitiful, when its cause is fully understood. 

Now isn't it about time to make a new departure ? 
Isn't it about time for the debtor churches to take up 
their debts like men, and discharge them ? Isn't it about 



1 92 Every -Day Topics. 

time to stop dedicating church edifices to Jehovah, sub- 
ject to a mortgage of one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars ? Isn't it about time that churches become sound 
in their moralities, as they relate to the contraction of 
debts which they either will not, or cannot, pay ? We 
say " yes " to all these questions, and we know that the 
good sense and Christian feeling of the country will re- 
spond Amen! Let that " Amen" be put into practical 
shape at once, so that a thousand churches, now groan- 
ing under their debt, may go into the next year with 
shoulders light, and hearts not only lighter, but ready 
for all the good work that is going on around them. 

Temporal and Spiritual. 

Great public interest is concentrated upon the present 
struggle of Germany with the Papal power, and the free 
discussion of the relations of that power to the allegiance 
of the citizen to his own Government, now in progress in 
England. Mr. Gladstone's manifesto has placed the vital 
question involved squarely before the English people, 
and not less plainly before all the people of Europe. The 
ingenious protest and denial of Archbishop Manning and 
other adherents of His Holiness, have failed do do away 
with the charge of the ex-Premier, simply because it can- 
not be done away with. The assumption of supreme au- 
thority over the consciences of men by a man who claims 
infallibility, is one which no Government constituted like 
the British can tolerate with either dignity or safety. 
The German Government is right in principle on this 
question, whether it be just and wise in its measures or 
not ; and Mr. Gladstone occupies a position that is im- 
pregnable. The dogma of Papal infallibility is an offence 
to the common sense of the world, and the doctrine of 
supremacy which grows out of it as naturally as a tree 



The Church of the Fitture. 193 

grows out of the soil, is a challenge and an insult to every 
Government that holds and protects a Catholic subject 
within its limits. 

This would seem to be too plain a matter to call for 
argumentation. To claim supremacy in matters of con- 
science, and to hold, at the same time, the power of de- 
ciding on questions of conscience — of declaring what is 
right and what is wrong, in all things, civil as well as 
religious — is to claim the supreme and all-subordinating 
allegiance of every man who belongs to the Catholic 
communion in every country of the world. How many 
fair-minded men can deny this is beyond our compre- 
hension ; and the only reason why the matter does not 
make as great a commotion in America as it does in 
Great Britain and Germany, is that, as a State, we have 
no connection with the Church. Practically, the matter 
is of very little importance to us. The Catholic Church 
has the same toleration here that the Methodist Church 
has — no more, no less. Our Government simply pro- 
tects it ia its liberty, and sees that its own laws are 
obeyed, irrespective of all church communions. We 
come into- no collision with it, because we assume no 
church prerogatives and functions. England has a State 
Church, and it cannot tolerate the existence of two au- 
thorities that assume supremacy within the same king- 
dom ; but England is weak in its position, because itself 
assumes to be an authority in matters of religion. 

Theoretically, the Sovereign of Great Britain " can do 
no wrong." Here is a doctrine of " infallibility ;" and 
though it has no such range as that of the Papacy, and 
is applied rather to the breaking than the making of law, 
it is just as absurd as that against which Mr. Gladstone 
inveighs so mightily. There the State undertakes to 
meddle with the Church. It supports and in many ways 
directs it, and exercises functions that are just as illegiti- 
Vol. I.— 9 



1 94 Every -Day Topics. 

mate and presumptuous as those assumed by the Pope 
with relation to the different States. The same may be 
said of Prussia ; and the Pope has good right to say, if 
he chooses to do so : " Take your hand from religion, 
and I will take mine from the State. So long as you 
choose to make a State affair of religion you must not 
blame me for doing the same. Give me back my king- 
dom and my temporalities. Shape your policy to the 
necessities of my Church. Until you do so, I will define 
the limits of your power, and of my own, as it seems 
best to me, and best for the interests I have in charge." 
For ourselves, we rejoice to witness the present strug- 
gle. In the progress of the world, and in the free devel- 
opment of the power of Christianity, it was necessary 
that it should come ; and its coming marks an epoch and 
demonstrates an advance. Just as soon as the nations 
of the world can comprehend the fact that the Kingdom 
of Christ is not a kingdom of this world ; that it is within 
men, and is not in any way complicated with civil organ- 
ization and administration — just as soon will all strife 
between the State and the Church cease. The Pope, if 
report be true, has recently said that the only country 
where he is truly and practically respected is the United 
States. The reason is, that the State simply minds its 
own business, and lets him alone. When other States 
attend only to their civil functions, and let the Church, 
in all its denominations, take care of itself, they will care 
no more about the dogma of Papal infallibility than they 
do about the civil dogma of regal infallibility. They will 
not even take the trouble to " speak disrespectfully of 
the equator." It is now essentially a fight between the 
head of the greatest of the churches and the civil heads 
of the smaller churches. We have no such head in Am- 
erica, and therefore we don't care. Particularly, we do 
not care how soon the fight proceeds to its predestined 



The Church of the Future. 195 

end — the disestablishment of all the churches of Europe. 
That is the natural solution of the difficulty, and the 
only possible one. It may come through " a great re- 
ligious war," which the wise are foretelling, but which 
real wisdom will avoid, by putting away, at once and 
forever, its cause. 

The ox is a strong and excellent beast, but he cannot 
be yoked with the horse, who is equally strong and excel- 
lent. The horse cannot work according to his law with- 
out wearing out the ox, and the ox cannot work accord- 
ing to his law without degrading the horse, and cheating 
him of his power. The Church and the State can no 
more be yoked together with natural advantage than the 
ox and the horse. Their nature, wants, modes of action, 
drift of power are utterly different, and in the long run 
the ox will drag down and degrade the horse. To un- 
dertake to unite the machinery of the State and the 
Church is, in the end, to degrade the latter. To make 
the Church in any way subordinate to the shifting neces- 
sities and caprices of politics is a practical desecration 
of holy things. We believe that no State church ever 
existed, whether presided over by pope or king, that did 
not become corrupt, or so nearly dead as to lose its ag- 
gressiveness and healthfulness as a spiritual power. Mr. 
Gladstone and his friends have only to labor earnestly 
for the disestablishment of the Church of England, to 
lose all practical interest in the Papal dogmas and the 
Papal assumptions. By doing this, they will at least be 
in a position, as Englishmen, to oppose them with some 
show of consistency. 

Organs. 

• Machine music is not as popular as it was. The old- 
fashioned hand-organ has become a bore, even to the 



196 Every -Day Topics. 

children ; and unless it be supplemented by a knowing 
monkey, with appeals to the eye, the grinding goes on 
without reward. This confinement of musical execution 
to certain tunes, for which the player is not responsible 
— the circumscription of the limits of emotion by a for- 
eign manufacturer — this reiteration of the same jingle 
from street to street, at all times of the day and in all 
months of the year, to ears that are dainty and ears that 
are dull — all this conspires to make the organist an offence 
and the hand-organ a nuisance. There really was a time 
when things were different. When children heard no 
music in the school and none in the home, when brass 
bands were scarce and church-organs were supposed to 
be an invention of the devil, or one of the seductions of 
the Woman of Babylon, it was quite nice to be assured 
by a dirty Italian, who never had a home in his life, that 
there was no place like it, even when his reluctant instru- 
ment groaned and fainted away on the last syllable. 

What has happened with regard to the hand-organ 
has also happened with regard to party organs of every 
kind, political and religious. The fact v can be no longer 
ignored that the people are tired of organs. A newspa- 
per, recognized as strictly a party organ, is regarded as 
a newspaper without any soul. A newspaper that is 
simply the exponent of a party policy, the defender of 
party measures, and the unvarying supporter of party 
men, is looked upon with a contempt in this country 
which may well make it tremble with the apprehension 
of its certain doom. Party organs 'were adapted to a 
simple, unintelligent condition of society. At a time 
when the few invariably led the many, when the great 
masses of the people pinned their faith to their leaders, 
and did not do their own thinking, the party organ was 
in its glory. It cracked its whip, and the whole teai», 
however widely straggling, came into line. It blessed 



The Church of the Future. 197 

and blamed at will. When it declared one man to be a 
patriot, and another to be a traitor, the people believed 
it. It led unquestioning hosts to battle for measures 
and against measures, for men and against men, accord- 
ing to party policy, and did not even pretend to in- 
dependence. Now, everything from a party organ is 
regarded with distrust ; and it ought to be. The mouth- 
piece of a party is never the mouth-piece of a man. 
Its utterances are all shaped by the selfish policies and 
interests of party leaders ; for the strictly party press is 
never its own. The people have learned that there is 
nothing which needs to be accepted with so much cau- 
tion as any political statement uttered by a political 
organ* The chances are all against its being strictly 
true. In short, the people have outgrown the party 
press, and the day of independent thinking and in- 
dependent " scratching" and bolting has come. 

What we have said of the political party press is 
quite true of the religious party press. It has come to 
be absolutely essential that, in order to the achievement 
of a large success in religious journalism, the journal 
shall be independent. The strictly sectarian newspa- 
pers are not regarded at all with the respect which was 
formerly accorded to them. It is only the independent 
religious press that wins subscribers by the hundred 
thousand. Men have ceased to be interested in the 
discussion of questions from a sectarian standpoint. 
Their sympathies have surpassed sectarian bounds, and 
their interest goes deeper than creeds. They want to 
know what the independent thinker thinks. They 
would read what he writes. They have learned that the 
organ of a sect is as much the slave as the organ of a 
party. They have learned to think little of the conflict- 
ing systems of theology, and are anxious to know some- 
thing about religion. They are less anxious about any 



198 Every -Day Topics. 

particular " ism," and more interested in Christianity. 
Orthodoxy and heterodoxy mean less to them, and 
truth, more. In brief, they have ceased to pin their 
faith to sectarian leaders, and are thinking for them- 
selves. 

Now, all this is undoubtedly true, and what is to be 
done about it ? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing ? 
Without any question it is a good thing. It marks an 
era in the development of American Christianity. 
Everything that looks toward Christian unity breaks 
the power of the religious party press. Whatever the 
late meeting of the Evangelical Alliance did to forward 
Christian unity drove a nail in the coffin of the sectarian 
organ ; and more and more in the future the seotarian 
organ will cease to be a moral and religious power in 
the world, until it shall become simply a record of sec- 
tarian decadence. 

Meantime, the great masses of the people will read 
only for instruction and inspiration such records of in- 
dependent religious thought as emanate from those 
whose interest in Christianity is so deep and broad that 
they have no partisanship, and no party schemes to pro- 
mulgate. All advance toward Christian unity — all ad- 
vance toward vital Christianity — is an actual retirement 
from the influence of the sectarian organ ; and one of 
the best signs of the times is the recognized necessity 
of urgent appeals to the people for the support of the 
organs representing the different sects. 

Everything goes to prove that religious truth is to be 
formulated anew, in the interest of Christian unity, and 
it is proper to ask those clergymen who stand by their 
party organs, and hold themselves up as the representa- 
tives, conservators and defenders of orthodoxy, if it is 
not about time for them not only to recognize the signs 
of the day, but to begin to be true to their own convic- 



The Church of the Future. 199 

tions. There is no one of them who can express fully 
on paper his views of the Sabbath question, or the Bible 
question, or the question of future punishment, to say- 
nothing of questions still higher, and get all his ortho- 
dox associates to sign that paper. There are numbers 
of them who do not choose to preach the doctrines 
which they profess, and who do not fully preach what 
they believe. And they call themselves orthodox, and 
they criticise the orthodoxy of others, and they dread 
the proscription of the sectarian press, from whose in- 
fluence the people are becoming more and more free 
every year. Woe to a sectarian press that stands in 
the way of progress, and woe to those mistaken teachers 
who either bow to that press in front, or bolster it be- 
hind. The organ is worn out. It creaks and groans 
and whines with its old, old tunes, and they who turn 
the crank have lost their admirers, because the children 
have become men and women, and can do better with 
their time and money. 

The Free-Church Problem. 

There is one sad fact that stares the churches of this 
city, and of all other American cities, in the face, viz., 
that Christianity is not preached to the poor. If we step 
into almost any church on Fifth and Madison Avenues, 
on any Sunday, we shall find there a well-dressed 
crowd, or a thinly scattered company of fashionable 
people, and almost no poor people at all. These 
churches may carry on, and, as a rule, do carry on, a 
Mission Sunday-school in some part of the city, where 
a great deal of useful work is done. Under the circum- 
stances, they do as well as they can ; but the fact re- 
mains, that the people whose children are taught do not 
enter a church at all. It is in vain that they are invited 



200 Every -Day Topics. 

to attend preaching ; and the fact is demonstrated be- 
yond all question, as it appears to us, that there must 
be a change effected in the basis and policy of church 
support before they can be induced to do so. We may 
attribute their non-attendance to indifference to relig- 
ious subjects. This is an easy method of relieving our- 
selves of responsibility, but in view of the alarming fact 
that this indifference is steadily increasing, it becomes 
us to inquire whether the Church itself does not come in 
for a share of the blame, and to find, if possible, where 
that blame lies. 

We have before us a book entitled " Copy," by Hugh 
Miller Thompson, Rector of Christ Church, in this city, 
consisting of between sixty and seventy brief editorial 
articles, which has, we may say in passing, more 
straightforward common sense in it than any book we 
have met with in a year, and which presents to us two 
articles respectively revealing the basis of our difficulty 
and the way of release from it. The first is entitled, 
"A Proprietary Christianity," and the second " A Lost 
Act of Worship." We do not propose to quote from 
them, for we have not the space, but if the reason for, a 
change in the basis of church support, and the solution 
of the problem of a free church are not to be found in 
them, then they are hardly to be found in current litera- 
ture. Our churches are houses of men, and not houses 
of God. They are largely owned by individuals, and 
not by the church, or by any body of men representing 
the church. Either this is the case, or they are sold 
every year to the highest bidder. Tremendous ex- 
penditures are made in building churches ; great out- 
lays of money are needed for carrying them on ; in 
most of the churches there is absolute ownership of 
pews on the part of individuals ; and by private sale or 
public auction the sittings are apportioned to those who 



The Church of the Future, 201 

have the money to pay for them. There are free sit- 
tings, of course, but the men for whom they are left will 
not take and occupy them, and thus publicly advertise 
themselves as paupers. It seems plain to us that some 
change must be made exactly here, before the first step 
can be taken toward reform. Indeed, this change must 
be the first step. Our houses of worship must be rec- 
ognized as houses of God—houses in which there are no 
exclusive rights purchasable in any way by money — 
houses where the rich man and the beggar meet on 
common ground to worship a common Lord — houses to 
any seat in which any man, high or low, rich or poor, 
has equal right with any other man. We have tried the 
other plan long enough, and ought to be satisfied by this 
time that it is a failure, as it most lamentably is. 

Now comes up the question of church support. A 
church cannot be " run " without money. It cannot be 
built or bought without money. Well, in the first place, 
churches need not cost half the money they do, either 
to build or to carry on. We pay immense sums to make 
churches attractive, and there are those in New York 
that are crammed every Sunday simply for the purpose 
of hearing expensive music. There is a very large at- 
tendance upon certain churches in this city that has not 
the first motive of worship in it — churches in which ar- 
tistic music is made so prominent, indeed, as quite to 
put all ideas of worship out of the mind of those who 
are musically inclined. There is not only money enough 
for all necessary purposes, but money is absolutely 
wasted. Our churches are now built and run on the 
theory that men will pay for exclusive privileges for 
themselves, and will not pay for free privileges for all. 

And here is where Dr. Thompson's article on " A Lost 
Act of Worship " comes to its practical bearing. He 
claims that the Worship of God in Gifts has been lost, 
9* 



202 Every -Day Topics. 

and ought to be recovered. The first worship offered to 
Christ on earth was a worship of gifts. Gifts were rec- 
ognized acts of worship in the Jewish Church from time 
immemorial. All that is necessary is to reinstate this act 
of worship, so that every Christian who goes to church 
shall bring with his tribute of prayer and praise his of- 
fering of money, as an act of worship, in order to solve 
the free -church problem at once. Churches are to be 
built by gifts offered in worship — by a dedication of sub- 
stance as well as of self ; and they are to be carried on 
in the same way. We believe that if the solution of the 
free-church problem is anywhere, it is here. We are to 
lay aside all ideas of the ownership of pews, in every 
sense, and to bring every Sunday our offering of gifts, 
according to our ability and our degree of prosperity, as 
an act of worship, just as conscientiously as we bring our 
petition and our praise. We believe in the theory and 
in the plan wholly, and thus believing we believe it to 
be wholly practicable. We have not a question that a 
living Christian church, thoroughly enlightened on this 
subject by a clergyman sympathetic with these views, 
would find the obstacles to the plan all removed, as well 
as the obstacles to its usefulness. Of course the Church 
must go through a process of education to bring it to 
this high plane, but we are satisfied that it must be 
brought here before its triumphs will be great — before it 
will check in any considerable degree the tide of world - 
liness that threatens to engulf it, or bring its influence to 
bear upon those who persistently refuse to hear its voice. 
The experiment will not be a new one of sustaining a 
church on the current gifts of its attendants, but this 
grand idea of incorporating acts of beneficence into the 
regular Sunday worship of the Christian Church will be 
new to the great multitude, and, if adopted, will forever 



The Church of the Future. 203 

relieve the preacher from appearing before his people as 
a beggar. It will make the churches God's houses and 
not man's, and the ministry of the churches a universal 
ministry. It will at least secure the world's confidence 
in our sincerity, and, if it persists in its indifference, 
leave it without excuse. 



THE COMMON MORALITIES. 

The Popular Capacity for Scandal. 

ONE of the most saddening and humiliating exhibi- 
tions which human nature ever makes of itself, is 
in its greedy credulity touching all reports of the mis- 
demeanors of good men. If a man stand high as a moral 
force in the community; if he stand as the rebuker and 
denouncer of social and political sin ; if he be looked 
up to by any considerable number of people as an exam- 
ple of virtue ; if the whole trend and power of his life be 
in a high and pure direction ; if his personality and in- 
fluence render any allegation against his character most 
improbable, then most readily does any such allegation 
find eager believers. It matters not from what source 
the slander may come. Multitudes will be influenced 
by a report against a good man's character from one who 
would not be believed under oath in any matter involv- 
ing the pecuniary interest of fifty cents. The slanderer 
may be notoriously base — may be a panderer to the 
worst passions and the lowest vices — may be a shame- 
less sinner against social virtue — may be a thief, a noto- 
rious liar, a drunkard, a libertine, or a harlot — all this 
matters nothing. The engine that throws the mud is not 
regarded. The white object at which the foul discharges 
are aimed is only seen ; and the delight of the by- 



The Common Moralities. 205 

standers and lookers-on is measured by the success of 
the stain sought to be inflicted. 

As between the worldling and the man who professes to 
be guided and controlled by Christian motives, all this is 
natural enough. The man bound up in his selfish and 
sensual delights, who sees a Christian fall, or hears the 
report that he has fallen, is naturally comforted in the 
belief that, after all, men are alike — that no one of them, 
however much he may profess, is better than another. 
It is quite essential to his comfort that he cherish and 
fortify himself in this conviction. So, when any great 
scandal arises in quarters where he has found himself 
and his course of life condemned, he listens with ready 
ears, and is unmistakably glad. We say this is natural, 
however base and malignant it may be ; but when people 
reputed good — nay, people professing to be Christian — 
shrug their virtuous shoulders and shake their feeble 
heads, while a foul scandal touches vitally the character 
of one of their own number, and menaces the extinguish- 
ment of an influence, higher or humbler, by which the 
world is made better, we hang our heads with shame, or 
raise them with indignation. If such a thing as this is 
natural, it proves just one thing, viz. : that these men are 
hypocrites. There is no man, Christian or Pagan, who 
can rejoice in the faintest degree over the reputed fall of 
any other man from rectitude, without being at heart a 
scamp. All this readiness to believe evil of others, es- 
pecially of those who have been reputed to be eminently 
good, is an evidence of conscious weakness under temp- 
tation, or of conscious proclivity to vice that finds com- 
fort in eminent companionship. 

There is no better test of purity and true goodness than 
reluctance to think evil of one's neighbor, and absolute 
incapacity to believe an evil report about good men, ex- 
cept upon the most trustworthy testimony. Alas, that 



206 Every-Day Topics. 

this large and lovely charity is so rare ! But it is only 
with those who possess this charity that men accused of 
sins against society have an equal chance with those ac- 
cused, under the forms of law, of crime. Every man 
brought to trial for crime is presumed to be innocent 
until he is proved to be guilty ; but, with the world at 
large, every man slandered is presumed to be guilty until 
he proves himself to be innocent ; and even then it takes 
the liberty of doubting the testimony. Every man who 
rejoices in a scandal thereby advertises the fact of his 
own untrustworthiness ; and every man who is pained by 
it, and refuses to be impressed by it, unconsciously re- 
veals his own purity. He cannot believe a bad thing 
done by one whom he regards as a good man, simply 
because he knows he would not do it himself. He gives 
credit to others for the virtue that is consciously in his 
own possession, while the basemen around him, whether 
Christian in name or not, withhold that credit because 
they cannot believe in the existence of a virtue of which 
they are consciously empty. When the Master uttered 
the words, "Let him that is without sin among you first 
cast a stone at her," he knew that none but conscious de- 
linquents would have the disposition to do so ; and when, 
under this rebuke, every fierce accuser retired over- 
whelmed, He, the sinless, wrote the woman's crime in 
the sand for the heavenly rains to efface. If he could do 
this in a case of guilt not disputed, it certainly becomes 
his followers to stand together around every one of their 
number whom malice or revenge assails with slander to 
which his or her whole life gives the lie. 

In a world full of influences and tendencies to evil, 
where every good force is needed, and needs to be jeal- 
ously cherished and guarded, there is no choicer treasure 
and no more beneficent power than a sound character. 
This is not only the highest result of all the best forces 



The Common Moralities. 207 

of our civilization, but it is the builder of those forces in 
society and the State. Society cannot afford to have it 
wasted or destroyed ; and its instinct of self-preservation 
demands that it shall not be suffered. There is nothing 
so sensitive and nothing so sacred as character ; and 
every tender charity, and loyal friendship, and chival- 
rous affection, and manly sentiment and impulse, ought 
to intrench themselves around every true character in 
the community so thoroughly that a breath of calumny 
shall be as harmless as an idle wind. If they cannot do 
this, then no man is safe who refuses to make terms with 
the devil, and he is at liberty to pick his victims where 
he will. 

Professional Morals. 

No man has a right to practise his profession in such 
a way as to encourage personal vice in those whom he 
serves, or wrong-doing toward individuals and the com- 
munity. This is a very simple proposition, to which no 
respectable man in any profession will presume to make 
an objection. If there ever lived a professional villain of 
whom a professional villifier could say : " This is he who 
made it safe to murder, and of whose health thieves in- 
quired before they began to steal," he could only be 
saved from universal execration by a natural doubt of 
the justice of the sarcasm and the candor of its author. 
Theoretically, there are no differences among decent men 
on this subject, when it is placed before the mind in this 
way. It is one of those simple, self-evident propositions, 
about which no man would think of arguing for an in- 
stant. Up to the bar of this proposition one can bring 
every act of his professional life, and decide for himself 
whether it be legitimate and morally good. We repeat 
it — No man has a right to practise his prof ession in such 



208 Every-Day Topics. 

a way as to encourage personal vice in those whom he 
serves, or wrong-doing toward i?idividuals and the com- 
munity. 

The great cities are full of men who have achieved re- 
markable skill in the treatment of a certain class of dis- 
eases, and other dangerous or inconvenient consequences 
of a bestial social vice. No matter how often their pa- 
tients may approach them, or how vile they may be, or 
how successfully they may scheme against the peace and 
purity of society, or what form the consequences of their 
sin may assume, these professional men take their fee, 
and do what they can to shield the sinners from the ef- 
fect of their crimes. Whatever they may be able to do 
professionally to make it safe for men and women to 
trample upon the laws of social purity, they do and con- 
stantly stand ready to do. Yet these men have a defence 
of themselves which enables them to hold their heads up. 
They are physicians. It is their business to treat disease 
in whatever form it may present itself. It would be im- 
pertinent in them to inquire into the life of those who 
come to them for advice. They are not the keepers of 
other men's consciences. They are men of science, and 
not of morals. It is their business to cure disease by the 
speediest and best methods they know, and not to inquire 
into character, or be curious about the indirect results 
of their skill. Such would be their defence or the line 
of their defence ; yet, if it can be seen or shown that 
their professional life encourages vice in the community, 
by the constant shield which it offers against the conse- 
quences of vice, the defence amounts to nothing. If a 
debauchee or a sensualist of any sort finds impunity for 
his excesses in the professional skill of his physician, 
and relies upon that skill to shield him from the conse- 
quences of his sins, be they what they may, his physi- 
cian becomes the partner of his guilt for gold, and a 



The Common Moralities. 209 

professional pander to his appetites. He may find pro- 
fessional brethren to defend him, but before the unso- 
phisticated moral sense of the world he will be a de- 
graded man, and stand condemned. 

There are such men in the world as professional par- 
doners of sin. There are men in priestly robes who, 
on the confession of a penitent, or one who assumes the 
position of a penitent, release him professionally from 
the consequences of his misdeeds. Unless history has 
lied, there have been men among these to whom the 
vicious have gone for shrift and pardon for a considera- 
tion, and received what they went for, on every occasion 
of overt crime when the voice of conscience in their su- 
perstitious souls would not be still, and who have retired 
from the confessional ready for more crimes, from whose 
spiritual consequences they have intended and expected 
to find relief in the same way. It is not necessary to 
charge such desecration of the priestly office upon any 
one. We have no reason to believe that in this country 
such things are common ; but we know that priests 
are human, and that there have been bad and merce- 
nary men among them. It is only necessary to suppose 
cases like this, to see that a priest may, in the exercise 
of his professional functions, become the partner of the 
criminal in his crimes, a friend and protector of vice, 
and a foe to the purity and good order of society. He 
can set up his professional defence, and find professional 
defenders, perhaps ; but any child, capable of compre- 
hending the question, will decide that he is degraded 
and disgraced. 

What is true, or may be true, of these professions, is 
true of any profession. Nothing is more notorious than 
that there are lawyers who are public nuisances — who 
encourage litigation, who are universally relied upon by 
criminals for the defence of crime, and whose reputation 



210 Every -Day Topics. 

and money have indeed been won by their ability to clear 
the guilty from the consequences of their wrong-doing. 
Between these low extremes of professional prostitution 
and the high ground occupied by the great mass of legal 
men, there are many points where self-interest, united 
with incomplete knowledge, is powerful to lead the best 
minds into doubtful ways, and engage them in the sup- 
port of doubtful causes or the defence of doubtful men. 
It is freely admitted that the best lawyer may find ques- 
tions of personal morality and professional propriety in 
his practice that are hard to settle, and that may con- 
scientiously be settled incorrectly ; but no lawyer needs 
to question whether it is right for him to strengthen the 
position of a notorious scamp, especially if that scamp 
is known to be a corrupter of the law by all the means 
in his power, and a wholesale plunderer of the people. 

Let Us be Virtuous. 

The devil is a sharp financier. He manages to make 
good people, or people who think they are good, pay the 
dividends on all the stock he issues, and cash all his 
premiums on rascality. Sometimes, however, the good 
people get tired, and, taking on a fit of severe virtue, 
protest. In the city of New York there was a Committee 
of Seventy operating against seventy rogues multiplied 
by seven, and all the city was in a state of fierce indig- 
nation. It was found that the public purse had been 
shamelessly robbed — that the work had been going on 
for years — and that the robbers were men of power, 
both in and out of office. We say this was found to be 
the case, but we do not mean to intimate that the find- 
ing was a new one. No one was any more certain then 
than he had been for years that the tax-payers of the 
city were systematically robbed. It was just as well 



The Common Moralities. 21 1 

known then as it is now, that men in public office were 
making fortunes illegitimately. The figures which The 
Times and its coadjutors published did not add to 
the popular conviction in this matter. They simply 
showed how much the public had been robbed ; and it 
was the magnitude of the figures that roused the moral 
indignation. The people knew their rulers were doing 
wrong, but they were too busy with making money to 
interfere. They knew they were stealing something, but 
thought it best to permit the theft ; and they only be- 
came overwhelmingly conscientious when they found 
that the rogues were determined to have their last dol- 
lar. Then they grew wide awake, grasped their pockets, 
cried " Stop thief! " and became virtuous. 

Shall we — must we — confess that such enormous frauds 
and robberies as these which we notice are only render- 
ed possible by a low condition of the public morality ? 
Must we confess that only in New York City such things 
have happened. Must we confess that this shocking 
and unparalleled malfeasance is only an outcropping of 
a universally underlying baseness, and that there are 
ten thousand men in New York City alone who would 
have been glad to do exactly what our rulers have done, 
and would have done it with the opportunity ? Think 
ye that these rogues are sinners above all Galileans ? 
Let us acknowledge the truth. They were proceeded 
against not because they offended the public conscience, 
not because they did wrong, not because they were the 
enemies of public virtue, not because their example 
demoralized and debauched our children, not because 
they shamed and disgraced us in the eyes of the world, 
not because they stole from us constantly, and not be- 
cause they used us as clean means to dirty ends, for all 
these had they been doing for years, with our knowledge 
and consent ; but because they had stolen so enormously 



2 1 2 Every- Day Topics. 

that we were in danger of being ruined. This roused us, 
and we found that we had a conscience, carried for con- 
venience in the bottom of our pockets, and only stirred 
by thieves who reach very far down. 

It is time that a community in which such robberies 
are possible were alarmed for itself. We are overrun 
by men of easy virtue. Picking and stealing are going 
on everywhere. The community is full of men who are 
anxious to make money without earning it. They fill 
the lobby at the Capitol, they fasten in various capaci- 
ties upon railroad corporations, they hang upon insur- 
ance companies, they seek for sinecures everywhere. 
Their influence is intolerable, yet they are everywhere 
tolerated. They regard it as no wrong by whatsoever 
and in what way soever they may be benefited by a cor- 
poration. All means are fair that take money from a 
corporation. Stockholders are systematically robbed, 
and have been for many years ; yet there is not moral 
force and earnestness enough in the popular protest to 
gain the slightest attention, or arrest the passage of the 
plunder for a moment. There is moral rottenness in 
every quarter. The "dead-head" is everywhere, and 
the dead-heart invariably keeps it company. 

But let us rejoice that we have at last a protest. Ay, 
let us rejoice that a few have had the opportunity to do 
what many would be glad to do if they had the oppor- 
tunity, and thus learn what a wilderness of wolves our 
apathy and toleration have sheltered and permitted to 
multiply, until our lives and fortunes are in danger. The 
popular greed for money, coupled with low morality, 
runs just as directly into robbery as a river tends to the 
sea. Opportunity is all that is needed to prove how 
universal and powerful is the propensity to steal. What 
the better elements of society need is union and deter- 
mination in the effort to shut from rogues this opportu- 



The Common Moralities. 213 

nity. No bad man is fit for any office, and the good 
men of a city who do not think it worth while to unite 
for the simple purpose of being ruled by good men, 
have none but themselves to blame if they are robbed. 
Indeed, by refusing to unite for this purpose, they be- 
come participators in the crimes which they condemn. 



WOMAN. 

Ownership in Women. 

A MAN was recently hanged in Massachusetts for tak- 
■**■ ing vengeance on one who had practically disputed 
his property in a girl. The man was a brute, of course, 
but he had an opinion that a girl who had given herself 
to him, in the completest surrender that a woman can 
make, was in some sense his — that her giving herself to 
another involved his dishonor — and that his property in 
her was to be defended to the extremity of death. A 
prominent newspaper, while recording the facts of the 
case, takes the occasion to say that this idea of owner- 
ship in women is the same barbarism out of which grow 
the evils and wrongs that the "woman movement" is 
intended to remove. If we were to respond that owner- 
ship in women, only blindly apprehended as it was by 
our brutal gallows-bird, is the one thing that saves us 
from the wildest doctrines and practices of the free- 
lovers, and is one of the strongest conservative forces of 
society, it is quite likely that we should be misunder- 
stood ; but we shall run the risk, and make the assertion. 
There is an instinct in the heart of every woman which 
tells her that she is his to whom she gives herself, and 
his alone — an instinct which bids her cling to him while 
she lives or he lives — which identifies her life with his — 
which makes of him and her twain one flesh. When 
this gift is once made to a true man, he recognizes its 



Woman. 215 

significance. He is to provide for her that which she 
cannot provide for herself; he is to protect her to the 
extent of his power ; she is to share his home, and to be 
his closest companion. His ownership in her covers his 
most sacred possession, and devolves upon him the grav- 
est duties. If it were otherwise, why is it that a woman 
who gives herself away unworthily, feels, when she finds 
herself deceived, that she is lost ? — that she has parted 
with herself to one who does not recognize the nature 
of the gift, and that she who ought to be owned, and, 
by being owned, honored, is disowned and dishonored ? 
There is no true, pure woman living who, when she gives 
herself away, does not rejoice in the ownership which 
makes her forever the property of one man. She is not 
his slave to be tasked and abused, because she is the 
gift of love and not the purchase of money ; but she is 
his, in a sense in which she cannot be another man's 
without dishonor to him and damnation to herself. 

Our gallows-bird was, in his brutal way, right. If he 
had been living in savage society, without laws, and with 
the necessity of guarding his own treasures, his act would 
have been looked upon as one of heroism by all the beau- 
ties and braves of his tribe. The weak point in his case 
was, that his ownership in what he was pleased to call 
"his girl" was not established according to the laws 
under which he lived. He was not legally married, and 
had acquired no rights under the law to be defended. 
What he was pleased to consider his rights were estab- 
lished contrary to law, and he could not appeal to law 
for their defence. He took the woman to himself con- 
trary to law, he defended his property in her by murder, 
and he was hanged. He was served right. Hemp would 
grow on a rock for such as he anywhere in the world. 
There is no cure for the man who seduces and slays, but 
a broken neck. 



216 Every- Day Topics. 

There is nothing more menacing in the aspect of social 
affairs in this country than the effort among a certain 
class of reformers to break up the identity of interest 
and feeling among men and women. Men are alluded 
to with sneers and blame, as being opposed to the in- 
terests of women, as using the power in their hands — a 
power usurped — to maintain their own predominance at 
the expense of woman's rights and woman's well-being. 
Marriage, under this kind of teaching, becomes a com- 
pact of convenience, into which men and women may 
enter, each party taking along the personal independence 
enjoyed in a single state, with separate business interests 
and separate pursuits. In other words, marriage is re- 
garded simply as the legal companionship of two beings 
of opposite sexes, who have their own independent pur- 
suits, with which the bond is not permitted to interfere. 
It contemplates no identification of life and destiny. The 
man holds no ownership in woman which gives him a 
right to a family of children and a life devoted to the 
sacred duties of motherhood. The man who expects 
such a sacrifice at the hands of his wife is regarded as a 
tyrant or a brute. Women are to vote, and trade, and 
practise law, and preach, and go to Congress, and do 
everything that a man does, irrespective of the marriage 
bonds. Women are to be just as free to do anything 
outside of their homes as men are. They are to choose 
their careers and pursue them with just as little reference 
to the internal administration of their families as their 
husbands exercise. This is the aim and logical end of 
all the modern doctrines concerning woman's rights. 
The identification of woman with man, as the basis of 
the institution of the family, is scoffed at. Any owner- 
ship in woman, that comes of the gift of herself to him, 
and the assumption of the possession by him, with its 
life-long train of obligations and duties, is contemned. 



Woman. 217 

It is assumed that interests which are, and must forever 
remain, identical, are opposed to each other. Men and 
women are pitted against each other in a struggle for 
power. 

Well, let it be understood, then, that men are opposed 
to these latter-day doctrines, and that they will remain 
so. They are determined that the identity of interest 
between men and women shall never be destroyed ; that 
the sacred ownership in women, bestowed on all true 
marriage, shall never be surrendered ; that the family 
shall be maintained, and that the untold millions of true 
women in the world who sympathize with them shall be 
protected from the false philosophies and destructive poli- 
cies of their few misguided sisters, who seek to turn the 
world upside down. Political conventions may throw 
their sops to clamoring reformers, but they mean nothing 
by it. They never have redeemed a pledge to these re- 
formers, and Ave presume they have never intended to 
do so. They expect the matter to blow over, and, if we 
do not mistake the signs of the times, it is rapidly blow- 
ing over, with more or less thunder and with very little 
rain. In the meantime, if the discussions that have 
grown out of these questions have tended to open a 
broader field to woman's womanly industry, or obliterat- 
ed unjust laws from the statute-book, let every man re- 
joice. No good can come to woman that does not bene- 
fit him, and no harm that does not hurt him. Humanity 
is one, and man and woman rise or fall together. 

Three Pieces of the Woman Question. 

first piece. 

A survey ,of the States of the Union, and of the Union 
under the general Government, will show to any candid 
observer that the legislation of the country, in all its de- 
Vol. I.— 10 



2 1 8 Every -Day Topics. 

partments, is above, rather than below, the average 
moral sense of the nation. The fact is seen in the inad- 
equate execution of the laws. There are many statutes 
relating to public morals and civil policy which appear 
to be the offspring of the highest and purest principles, 
that stand as dead letters in State and national law, sim- 
ply because the average moral sense of the people does 
not demand and enforce their execution. They are en- 
acted through the influence or by the power of men of 
exceptional virtue, who find, to their sorrow, that while 
it is easy to make good laws, it is difficult, and often im- 
possible, to execute them. So far as we know, it has 
never occurred to them to call for the assistance of wo- 
men in the execution of these laws, nor has it occurred 
to women to offer their assistance to them for this end. 
One or two questions, suggested by the discussions of 
the time, naturally grow out of this statement. 

First. — Is it of any practical advantage to have better 
laws, until the average morality of the people is sufficient 
to execute those which we have ? 

Second. — Is it right that women should have an equal 
or a determining voice in the enactment of laws which 
they do not propose to execute, which they do not pro- 
pose to assist in executing, which they could not execute 
if they would, and which they expect men to execute for 
them? 

Third. — Supposing that women would give us better 
laws than we have (which is not evident), what would be 
the practical advantage to them or to us, so long as they 
must rely upon us to execute them — upon us, who find 
it impossible to enforce our own laws, some of the best 
of which are the outgrowth of the pure influence of wo- 
men in home and social life ? 



Woman. ■ 219 

SECOND PIECE. 

In national and international life there are policies 
of action and attitude to be adopted and maintained. 
These policies sometimes cost a civil war for their estab- 
lishment or defence, and, not unfrequently, a war with 
related nations. It so happens, in the nature of the 
case, that no single nation has it in its power to abolish 
war. The only way for a nation to live, when attacked 
by foes within or without, is to fight ; and, in the pres- 
ent condition of the world, a national policy which has 
not behind it the power of physical defence is as weak 
and contemptible a thing as the world holds. Out of this 
statement, which we presume no one will dispute, there 
arise two questions. 

First. — Would a lack of all personal risk and respon- 
sibility, on the part of those delegated to establish and 
pronounce the policy of a nation, tend to prudent coun- 
sels and careful decisions ? 

Second. — Is it right — is it kind and courteous to men 
— for women to demand an equal or a determining voice 
in the establishment of a national policy which they do 
not propose to defend, which they do not propose to 
assist in defending, which they could not defend if they 
would, and which they expect men to defend for them ? 

THIRD PIECE. 

Mr. Gleason, the Tax Commissioner of Massachusetts, 
recently reported to the Legislature of that State that a 
tax of nearly two million dollars is paid annually by the 
women of the State on property amounting, at a low val- 
uation, to one hundred and thirty-two million dollars. 
The fact is an interesting and gratifying one, in every 



220 • Every -Day Topics. 

point of view. Naturally it is seized upon by the advo- 
cates of woman-suffrage, and brought prominently for- 
ward to assist in establishing woman's claim to the ballot. 
The old cry of " no taxation without representation " is 
renewed, however much or little of essential justice may 
be involved in the phrase. Well, if women are, or ever 
have been, taxed as women (which they are not, and 
never have been) ; if they produced this wealth, or won 
it by legitimate trade (which they did not) ; if the men 
who produced it received their right to the ballot by or 
through it ; if nine-tenths of the wealth of the State were 
not in the hands of business men whose pursuits have 
specially fitted them to be the guardians of the wealth of 
the State ; if the counsels of these tax-paying women 
could add wisdom to the wisdom of these men ; if the 
men who produced this wealth, and bestowed it upon , 
these women, did it with distrust of the laws enacted by 
men for its protection, and with the desire for the social 
and political revolution which woman-suffrage would 
produce, in order that it might be better protected ; if 
there were any complaint of inadequate protection to 
this property on account of its being in the hands of wo- 
men — if all or any one of these suppositions were based 
in truth — then some sort of a plea could be set up on 
Mr. Gleason's exhibit by those who claim the ballot for 
women. As the facts are, we confess our inability to 
find in it any comfort or support for those who seek for 
the revolution under consideration. On the contrary, we 
find that the ballot as it stands to-day, with its privileges, 
responsibilities, and limitations, secures to woman com- 
plete protection in the enjoyment of revenues which are 
proved to be immense, all drawn from land and sea by 
the hands of men whose largess testifies alike of their 
love and their munificence. 



Woman. 221 

Women in the Colleges. 

We are not among those who fancy that there are any- 
remarkable social dangers connected with bringing the 
sexes together during the processes of their education. 
The question of admitting women to colleges hitherto 
devoted to young men has been, and still is, under seri- 
ous consideration. It may be said that, if it is really de 
sirable that any considerable number of women should 
receive the same education that the young men of the 
colleges receive, they should have the opportunity to do 
so. It may be said, too, that this question of the educa- 
tion of women has only an indirect relation to the ques- 
tion of woman-suffrage, and should never be confounded 
with it. " The Woman Question" proper has no legiti- 
mate connection with the question of admitting women to 
the colleges where young men are educated. If the studies 
and the modes of study of the college are not to be modi- 
fied in consequence of the admission of women, the men 
— teachers and students — need to make no objection. 
The society of women will do them good rather than 
harm. It is certainly one of the disadvantages of college 
and female boarding-school life that it is sexually isolated. 
There is no question that the daily association of the 
sexes when young, under judicious supervision and reg- 
ulation, is much healthier than their separation. It is 
better that the sexes see each other daily than to dream 
of each other ; and either the one or the other they al- 
ways do. So, in our judgment, the question is not one 
mainly of social health and purity. If it is, then it is 
settled, and calls for no further discussion. It is the 
universal testimony of teachers, so far as we have learned, 
that morally the sexes do well together in school — do 
better, indeed, than when separated. The association of 
men and women in a school or college is just as safe and 



222 Every -Day Topics. 

healthful as their association in all ordinary life. Men 
and women are never shut away froln each other for long 
periods of time without damage and disaster. Imagina- 
tion is unduly excited, feeling becomes morbid, and man- 
ners are degraded by such separations ; and the earlier 
they can be dispensed with the better. 

Can they be dispensed with altogether ? We think 
not. We have never yet felt called upon to part with 
our old opinion that a man is not a woman, and that a 
woman is not a man ; that, as a consequence, their 
spheres of labor and office differ, and that their educa- 
tional training should have reference as well to their 
peculiarities of constitution as to the spheres of life they 
are to occupy. Now, if any college is adapted just as 
well to the training of young women as of young men, it 
is well adapted to the training of neither. If at Vassar 
and Holyoke women do not have a better chance than 
at Amherst and Harvard, Vassar and Holyoke are 
grossly at fault, and Amherst and Harvard are anything 
but what they pretend to be— first-class institutions for 
the training of young men, to lead the lives and do the 
work of men. If any of these young men's colleges are 
particularly desirable institutions for the education of 
women, they need reforming, unless it is proposed to 
change them into female seminaries. 

The claiming of places for women in young men's 
colleges as a right, and the denunciation of their exclu- 
sion as a wrong to woman, are the special functions of 
fanatics and fools. There are no rights and wrongs in 
the matter. It is entirely a matter of policy with re- 
gard to that which is best, on the whole, for both young 
men and young women. Granted that morally they 
would do good to each other in the college, as they un- 
doubtedly do in the primary and preparatory schools ; 
granted that they would purify each other socially, and 



Woman. 223 

stimulate each other intellectually ; granted that such 
association would soften and simplify the manners of all 
concerned ; the facts still remain, that men are not 
women, that women are not men, and that for their dif- 
fering spheres of life and labor they need a widely dif- 
ferent training. It certainly is not an object for society 
to make women more like men than they are, or in any 
way to divert them from a full and fine development of 
their womanhood. 

It ought to be said, on behalf of the women of Amer- 
ica, that they have not, in any considerable or influen- 
tial numbers, demanded admission to the colleges which 
have been specially designed for the training of young 
men. The demand has been made by theorists and 
dreamers, among men mostly. The truth is that there 
is no call for these changes of policy which deserves 
attention. The schools provided for the education of 
women are growing better and better every year. Col- 
leges for women are springing up all over the country, 
and Vassar is unquestionably a better place for young 
women — all sheltered by the single roof of the institu- 
tion — than Amherst or Harvard or Yale or Union can 
be, adapted as they all are to the wants of young men, 
as well as to their lack of wants. There are no wise 
fathers and mothers who would not prefer Vassar or 
Holyoke to Harvard or Yale as a training - place for 
their daughters. They can reach any grade of learning 
and culture in these institutions which they desire, with 
special adaptations of institutional appointment and ma- 
chinery to their wants as women, and special choice 
and arrangement of their studies to the womanly sphere 
of life they are to occupy. The managers of the col- 
leges for men will do what they think best in regard to 
the proposed change, but we believe they will have the 
support of the best men and women in every part of 



224 Every -Day Topics. 

the country if they decidedly and persistently refuse to 
make it. 



The Moral Power of Women. 

Nothing in American history has more nobly illus- 
trated the moral power of women, than the notorious 
Western crusade against the vice of drinking, and the 
traffic upon which it feeds. The exhibition and demon- 
stration of this power are so full of suggestion and in- 
struction, both to men and women, that they demand 
more than a passing consideration, especially in their 
bearing upon some of the most stirring questions of the 
time. 

Why was it in that crusade that the hardened rum- 
seller who, behind his bar, had dealt out the liquid 
death to his victims for years, quailed before a band of 
praying, beseeching women — women who, coming from 
their comfortable retirement, braved wind and storm 
and mud — braved obloquy and misrepresentation and 
curses, and all the harsh obstacles that brutality could 
throw in their path, to compass a reform that should 
keep their natural supporters and protectors pure and 
prosperous ? Why was it that men looking on formed 
new resolutions of sobriety, and reformed the vicious 
habits of their lives ? Why was it that changes which 
involved the destruction of a brutal business, and of 
habits to which hundreds of thousands were wedded 
with all the power of a burning appetite, awakened no 
more violence than they did ? Why was it that so many 
good men, whose souls protested against the sacrifice of 
ease and privacy which these women made, bowed to 
the movement as something supremely Christian, and, 
therefore, veritably divine ? 

First, of course, because there was no man, however 



Woman. 225 

brutal, who did not know that the women were right — 
that whiskey was a curse, not only to those who drank it, 
but to the unoffending who did not drink it. Every 
man felt that the action of the women was an em- 
bodiment and expression of the dictates of his own con- 
science. Approached in a way which disarmed all 
violent opposition, with an appeal to God and to all 
the manliness which he possessed, the vilest pander to 
a debased appetite trembled not only before the pure 
embodied conscience without, but before the answer- 
ing conscience within. He heard God's voice in the 
souls which approached him, and the same voice in 
his own soul. There was something terrible in this. 
A mob which would tear his house down, a descent of 
the officers of the law, the threats of outraged fathers 
and brothers, would only have stimulated his opposition, 
and given him an apology for continuing his crime ; but 
this quiet appeal to his conscience, by those whose con- 
sciences he knew to be pure, was awful to him. 

Second, the mind of man is so constituted as to feel 
most sensitively the praise and the blame of women. It 
is hard for any man to feel that he rests under the cen- 
sure of all the good women by whom he is surrounded. 
The harshest words that were spoken against the cru- 
saders were spoken by the women whom they found be- 
hind the bars they visited ; and these poor creatures 
were speaking to win the approval of the brutal men 
they loved. A man who has not some woman, some- 
where, who believes in him, trusts him and loves him, 
has reached a point where self-respect is gone. All 
men, who deserve the name of men, desire the respect 
of women ; and when a man finds himself in a business 
which fixes upon him the disapproval of a whole com- 
munity of women, a power is brought to bear upon him 
which he certainly cannot ignore, and which he finds it 
10* 



226 Every-Day Topics. 

difficult to resist. The power of woman, simply as wo- 
man, has had too many illustrations in history to need 
further discussion here. A man's self-respect can only 
be nursed to its best estate in the approval of the finer 
sense and quicker conscience of the women who know 
him. 

The third reason was that the end which these women 
sought was purely and beneficently a moral one. They 
were not after money, they did not pursue revenge, they 
did not seek political power or preferment, they worked 
in the interest of no party. All they desired, and all 
they labored for, was the reform and safety of their 
husbands, brothers, fathers and sons, and the extinction 
of those temptations and sources of temptation which 
endangered them. They bore no ill-will to the dram- 
seller, but the moment he relinquished his traffic they 
covered him with their kindness and sympathy. They 
not only did not have the sympathy of party men, as 
such, but they were denied the sympathy of portions of 
the Christian Church. They pursued a much- desired 
moral end by purely moral means. They sought noth- 
ing for themselves, but everything for the men they 
loved, and for the men that other women loved. The 
element of self-sacrifice was in it all. They went from 
peaceful home pursuits, from the retirement which 
was most congenial to them, from prayers where they 
begged for the blessing of heaven upon their enterprise, 
into the street, into foul dens of debauchery, into pri- 
vate expostulations with brutal men, into atmospheres 
reeking with ribaldry, and all to save others. No man 
with a spark of manliness in him — which, after all, is 
only godliness expressed in human character — could re- 
gard such a spectacle as that without being moved to 
admiration and reverence. 

And now for the lesson which this crusade — now re- 



Woman. 227 

tired into history — teaches us. It will be a hard one for 
some women to learn, but a desire for the conservation 
of the best forces of society demands that it shall not 
only be stated, but heeded. The ballot, even when ex- 
ercised in the right direction, has not yet, in any State, 
proved a cure for drunkenness. No law that has been 
enacted for the suppression of dram-selling, even in 
States where special constabulary machinery has been 
instituted for executing it, has done so much for the 
end sought as this crusade has done. In Massachusetts, 
the necessity of reform is as urgent as in New York. 
Does any one suppose that the moral power which the 
women wield to-day would be in their hands to wield if 
they held the ballot ? Not a bit of it. They are strong 
because they are not political. They are strong because 
they have no party to serve, no personal ambitions to 
push, no selfish ends to seek. If the Western women 
had had the ballot, how long is it to be supposed that 
their crusade would have been without political leader- 
ship and political perversion ? If these women had been 
the representatives of political power, how much tolera- 
tion would they have received at the hands of those 
whose interests they imperilled or destroyed ? What kind 
of treatment would an office-holder have had in their 
ranks ? Would an office-holder have dared to be seen 
in their ranks at all? If woman had the ballot, such a 
crusade would simply have been impossible. To respond 
that it would have been unnecessary, is to trifle with the 
subject. Men would be obliged to execute whatever laws 
women might pass under any circumstances, and they 
would execute the laws passed through the votes of 
women no better than they do their own. 

Further, let it be witnessed, that the women who did 
the most of the work in that crusade never have asked 
for the ballot, and never will do so. They would regard 



228 Every -Day Topics. 

the conferment of political suffrage upon them as a 
calamity, and it would undoubtedly be a calamity. It 
would rob them of their peculiar power — a power which 
all experience proves cannot be preserved too carefully. 
Woman cannot afford the ballot. It would tie her hands, 
weaken her influence, destroy her disinterestedness in 
the treatment of all public questions, and open into 
the beautiful realms of her moral power ten thousand 
streams of weakness and corruption. The woman who 
said that the crusade " meant the ballot," proved only 
by that speech how poorly qualified she was to use a 
ballot. She ought to have seen in the crusade something 
greater than the ballot — something almost infinitely 
above the poor machinery of politics — something by the 
side of which the ballot would be only a toy. The cru- 
sade did not mean the ballot ; it meant that woman does 
not need the ballot, cannot afford to take the ballot, will 
not have the ballot ; and on this conviction let all Amer- 
ican society gratefully felicitate itself. 

Provision for Wives and Children. 

The disasters that have occurred in the business cir- 
cles of New York during the last few months are full of 
practical suggestions, upon which the daily press has 
made abundant comment ; but one of them has received 
but little notice — viz. : the effect of these disasters upon 
the families of the sufferers. These, with many depend- 
ents, were sharers in the prosperity of those who have 
gone down to poverty. They lived in fine houses, and 
had all the privileges which wealth bestowed. Many of 
these business men had wives, who had been helpers 
and household economists through all the years of early 
struggle, and who held a strong moral claim upon a 
portion of the wealth which they have seen swept away 



Woman. 229 

without the power to lift a finger or say a word in self- 
protection. In a day, they have seen the accumulations 
of years melt away, and themselves and their little ones 
made poor. The husband and father, with burdens too 
heavy to be borne in his office or his counting-room, 
goes to his home to be tortured with the spectacle of a 
straitened life, among those who are more precious to 
him than all his wealth had been. It is quite likely that 
he will find heroism and self-denial and cheerfulness 
there ; but his pain will not be wholly cured by these, 
and he must always regret that when he had the power 
to secure a competence to his dependants he did not 
do it. 

A large majority of the business men of New York 
carry a heavy life insurance ; but this, at the very mo- 
ment of the failure of any one of them, is not only no 
help to him, but, by its yearly demands upon his re- 
sources, a constant drag upon his efforts and prosperity. 
It may be, indeed, that he will be unable to keep up his 
yearly premiums, and so be obliged to sacrifice all that 
he has paid during the previous years. Life insurance 
makes a provision for his death, but none at all for a 
disaster that may destroy his power to provide for his 
family just as effectually as his removal from the world. 
His power even to keep his life insured goes with his 
power to make money, and thus his family is left help- 
less whether he live or die. 

All men who deal in stocks, all who are in commercial 
or mercantile life, and all who are engaged in manufac- 
tures, have much at risk. Wars, revulsions, bad crops, 
capricious legislation, changes in the channels of trade, 
over-production— one or more of these, and other ad- 
verse causes, come in at unlooked-for seasons, and 
prove to them all that they hold their wealth by a very 
uncertain tenure. There is no man who does business 



230 Every -Day Topics. 

at all who may not be ruined by a combination of cir- 
cumstances that he can neither foresee nor control. 

Now, we know of no way by which a man can protect 
his family but by taking a competent sum from his busi- 
ness and bestowing it upon them outright, and securing 
it to them, in the days of actual wealth and prosperity. 
A man who, by honest enterprise, has secured wealth, 
has the right to bestow it where he chooses. When such 
a man endows a seminary, or establishes a charity of 
any sort, we praise him. We acknowledge his right to 
do what he will with his own ; and we ought not only to 
acknowledge his right to endow his family with the 
means of support, but insist that it is his duty to do so 
even before he endows his seminary or establishes his 
charity. 

There are two objections to this course : one of them 
coming from the man himself, and the other from the 
community. The man insists, either that he cannot 
spare the necessary sum from his business, or that he 
believes he can do better for his family by risking his 
all ; while the community, trusting him, reckons among 
his means that which he seems to own, even when, in 
fact, it is owned by his wife, the transfer never having 
been publicly known. It is against the man's mistakes 
that we wish specially to protest. He has no moral right 
to risk his all, when its loss would make his family poor, 
provided he has more than enough to do a fair, safe 
business. -This is the fatal blunder that nearly all men 
make. Their business grows, and its requirements 
grow, with their consent, or by their strenuous efforts. 
Large, superfluous wealth is their aim, and it is this in- 
excusable motive which prevents them from doing jus- 
tice to their dependants. If they would abandon this 
aim, there would be nothing in the way of a wise and 
provident policy. 



Woman. 231 

The objection on the part of the community is, under 
the present condition of affairs, a sound one ; but a lit- 
tle legislation would set this aside. If the transfer of 
money or property to one's wife and family were legally 
required to be made as public as the gift of a considera- 
ble sum to a public institution is naturally made, there 
would be no difficulty in the matter. If, when a man 
endows his wife with property, the act could only be 
made legal by the publication of the fact, and by a pub- 
lic statement of the sum transferred, showing that his 
available capital had been reduced by that amount, the 
business community would be protected. We see no 
valid objection to this. There are many ways in which, 
for public reasons, the private affairs of a man are re- 
quired to be made known, and there is nothing in this 
transaction which should exempt it from publicity. Ras- 
cality would avail itself of this privilege, without doubt, 
if it could ; but the privilege may be protected by all 
the safeguards that legislation can throw around it. A 
man may be compelled to prove that he has the right to 
dispose of a portion of his estate in the way proposed, 
without prejudice to his creditors or the community. 
We write without any knowledge of what the laws are, 
but with a very distinct idea of what they may and ought 
to be. We are, at least, sure that there ought to be 
some way in which men of wealth may justly — with 
every obligation to the community fairly considered — 
protect their wives and little ones in the possession of 
a portion of their means honestly won ; and we hope 
that those who are wise and powerful will see to it before 
new disasters come to plunge other families into ruin, 
and remind them of a duty too long neglected. 



WOMAN AND HOME. 

The New York Woman. 

TI7HAT kind of a being is the typical New York 
** Woman? Our neighbors across the water evi- 
dently regard her as something very different from the 
typical Englishwoman ; and they form their judgments 
not so much by what they know of the New York Wo- 
man at home, as by what they see of her abroad. They 
find her extravagant in her tastes, something more than 
self-assured in her bearing, "loud" in her dress, and 
superficial in her education and accomplishments — if 
she has any. Now, we do not admit that a woman who 
can be thus characterized is the type of New York 
womanhood. The world does not hold better women, or 
better educated women, or better mannered women, 
than are to be found in great numbers in this much de- 
famed city ; but the Englishman does not see them, for 
they jealously guard their society when he comes here, 
and when they travel they are unobtrusive and do not at- 
tract his attention. The average travelling Englishman 
in New York knows just as little of the best society of 
New York as the average travelling American does of 
the best society of London. 

Yet the Englishman has an apology in what he sees, 
and, perhaps, in all that he sees, for the severity of his 
judgment. There is a type of womanhood in New 



Woman and Home. 233 

York — and it has, alas! far too many representatives — 
of which every American, everywhere, has reason to be 
ashamed. The same type can be found in all the large 
cities of the country, but it exists in its perfection here. 
It lives in hotels and boarding-houses ; it travels, it 
haunts the fashionable watering-places ; it is prominent 
at the opera and the ball ; in short, it is wherever it can 
show itself and its clothes. It rejoices over a notice of 
itself in the Evening Chatterbox, or the Weekly Milk 
and Water, as among the proudest and most grateful of 
its social achievements. Its grand first question is : 
" Wherewithal shall I be clothed ? " and when that is 
answered as well as it can be, the next is : " How and 
where can I show my clothes so as to attract the most 
men, distress the greatest number of women, and make 
the most stunning social sensation ? " We have no fear 
of exaggerating in this characterization. We have seen 
these women at home and away ; and their presumption, 
boldness, vanity, idleness, display, and lack of all noble 
and womanly aims are a disgrace to the city which pro- 
duces them, and the country after whose name they call 
themselves. 

Of course there is a sufficient cause for the production 
of this type of woman, and it is to be found in her cir- 
cumstances and way of life. It is prevalent among the 
nouveaux riches — among those of humble beginnings 
and insufficient breeding and education. It is fostered 
in boarding-houses and hotels — those hot-beds of jeal- 
ousy and personal and social rivalry and aimless idle- 
ness. The woman who finds herself housed and clothed 
and fed and petted and furnished with money for artifi- 
cial as well as real wants, without the lifting of a finger 
or the burden of a care, and without the culture of head 
or heart that leads her to seek for the higher satisfac- 
tions of womanhood, becomes in the most natural way 



234 Every -Day Topics. 

precisely what we have described. It would be unnatu- 
ral for her to become anything else. The simple truth 
is, that unless women have a routine of duty that diverts 
their thoughts from themselves, and gives them some- 
thing to think of besides dress and the exhibition of it, 
they degenerate. The only cure for this that we know 
of is universal housekeeping. There is no man who can 
afford to pay a fair price for board, who cannot afford to 
keep house ; and housekeeping, though it be never so 
humble, is the most natural and the healthiest office to 
which woman is ever called. There is no one thing that 
would do so much to elevate the type of New York 
womanhood as a universal secession from boarding- 
house and hotel life, and a universal entrance upon 
separate homes. Such a step would increase the stock 
of happiness, improve health of body and health of 
mind, and raise at once the standard of morals and 
manners. 

The devil always finds work for idle hands to do, 
whether the hands belong to men or women ; but Amer- 
ican men are not apt to be idle. They are absorbed in 
work from early until late, and leave their idle wives, 
cooped up in rooms that cost them no care, to get rid of 
the lingering time as they can. Is it kind to do this, or 
is it cruel ? If it is kind in its motives, it is cruel in its 
results. The whole system of boarding-house and hotel 
life is vicious. To live in public, to be on dress parade 
every day, to be always part and parcel of a gossiping 
multitude, to live aimlessly year after year, with thoughts 
concentrated upon one's person and one's selfish delights, 
to be perpetually without a routine of healthy duty, is to 
take the broadest and briefest road to the degradation of 
all that is admirable and lovable in womanhood. It is 
to make, by the most natural process, that gay, gaudy, 
loud, frivolous, pretentious, vain, intriguing, unsatisfied, 



Woman and Home. 235 

and unhappy creature which the Englishman knows as 
" The New York Woman." 



Dressing the Girls. 

The complaint made by certain women, and by cer- 
tain men on behalf of women, that the provisions for 
woman's education are not equal to those for the educa- 
tion of men, has about as much foundation as other 
complaints from the same sources, and has no more. If 
there are any institutions for educating young men that 
are better furnished and more efficient than Vassar and 
Mount Holyoke and Rutgers, and other colleges that 
could be mentioned, are for the education of young 
women, we do not know where they are located. The 
public school systems of every State of the Union open 
to both sexes every advanced department alike ; and 
when we come to the highest class of private schools, 
the provisions made for girls are incomparably superior 
to those made for boys. We do not know of a single 
boys' school in the United States that is the equal in all 
respects of scores, if not hundreds, of schools devoted to 
the education and culture of young women. The model 
school for young women has become already the highest 
achievement of our civilization. 

When we bring within four walls, beneath a single 
roof, from fifty to one hundred young women, who from 
year's end to year's end are in the constant society of 
the best teachers that money can procure ; who are in- 
structed in every branch of learning that they may de- 
sire, and are taught every fine art for which they have 
any aptitude ; who are feasted with concerts and readings 
and social reunions, and are led into every walk of cul- 
ture for which their richly freighted time gives leisure ; 
who move among tasteful appointments, and lodge in 



236 Every- Day Topics. 

good rooms, and eat at bountiful tables, and are sub- 
jected to every purifying and refining influence that 
Christian love and thoughtfulness can bring to bear upon 
them, we are prepared to show about as strong a con- 
trast to the average boys' school, academy, and college, 
as it is possible to imagine. Yet we paint no fancy pic- 
ture. It is drawn from the literal reality. There are 
thousands of American young women in schools like 
this which we describe, supported there at an expense 
greater by from twenty-five to fifty per cent.' than the 
average amount devoted to young men of corresponding 
ages in first- class institutions. It costs from one thou- 
sand to two thousand dollars a year to support a girl at 
these schools — including the expense of dress — and men 
all over the United States, who have the means to do it, 
are educating their daughters in this way and at this 
cost. The truth is, that there are no such provisions 
made for men as there are for women. They are obliged 
to get their education in cheaper schools and in a rougher 
way. 

It is because the education of girls is so expensive and 
has become so much of a burden, that we write this arti- 
cle. To pay for a single girl's schooling and support at 
school a sum which is quite competent to support in com- 
fort a small family — a sum greater than the average in- 
come of American families — is a severe tax on the best- 
filled purse. It can be readily seen, however, that the 
school itself neither receives nor makes too much money. 
The extraordinary expense for many girls is in the mat- 
ter of dress. It is a shame to parents and daughters alike 
that there are a great many young women in American 
boarding-schools whose dress costs a thousand dollars a 
year, and even more than that sum. The effect of this 
over-dressing on the spirit and manners of those who 
indulge in it, as well as on those who are compelled to 



Woman and Home. 237 

economical toilets, is readily apprehended by women, 
if not by men. This extravagant dressing is an evil 
which ought to be obviated in some way. How shall 
it be done ? America is full of rich people — of peo- 
ple so freshly in the possession of money that they 
know of no way by which to express their wealth ex- 
cept through lavish display. They build fine houses, 
they buy showy equipages, and then burden themselves 
with dress and jewelry. Human nature in a young wo- 
man is, perhaps, as human as it is anywhere ; and so 
there comes to be a certain degree of emulation or com- 
petition in dress among school-girls, and altogether too 
much thought is given to the subject — to a subject which 
in school should absorb very little thought. 

We know of but one remedy for this difficulty, and 
that is a simple uniform. We do not know why it is not 
just as well for girls to dress in uniform as for boys. 
There are many excellent schools in England where the 
girls dress in uniform throughout their entire educa- 
tion. We believe that a uniform dress is the general 
habit in Catholic schools everywhere. By dressing in 
uniform, the thoughts of all the pupils are released from 
the consideration of dress ; there is no show of wealth, 
and no confession of poverty. Girls from widely sepa- 
rated localities and classes come together, and stand or 
fall by scholarship, character, disposition, and manners. 
The term of study could be lengthened by the use of the 
money that would thus be saved ; and while a thousand 
considerations favor such a change, we are unable to 
think of one that makes against it. There is no virtue 
and no amiable characteristic of young women that 
would not be relieved of a bane and nursed into healthy 
life by the abandonment of expensive dress at school. 
Who will lead the way in this most desirable reform ? 



238 Every -Day Topics. 

Home and its Queen. 

There are not many propositions, in this captious world 
and questioning age, that are permitted to pass unchal- 
lenged. It used to be supposed that Adam was the first 
man, but there are those who doubt it now. The solid 
democratic faith in universal suffrage is shaken in a mul- 
titude of minds by the facility with which the demagogue 
appropriates a popular privilege to his own corrupt pur- 
poses. Our good old Bible, out of which has come all 
that is worth anything in our civilization, and in which 
the most of us trust, has been the butt of the sceptic for 
centuries, and hears strange questions in these days from 
the lips of those who pretend to preach its truth. Still, 
two and two make four, the sun is larger than the earth, 
and we have yet to hear any m«in or woman deny that in 
the quality of the homes of the nation abides the nation's 
destiny. If these homes are nurseries of manly and wo- 
manly virtue, and schools of economy and prosperity, 
the natural outcome and expression of them will be a 
government of justice and freedom, and social institu- 
tions that shall be liberal and pure. 

There is probably not an unperverted man or woman 
living who does not feel that the sweetest consolations 
and best rewards of life are found in the loves and de- 
lights of home. There are very few who do not feel 
themselves indebted to the influences that clustered 
around their cradle for whatever of good there may be 
in their characters and conditions. Home, based upon 
Christian marriage, is so evidently an institution of God, 
that a man must become profane before he can deny it. 
Wherever it is planted, there stands a bulwark of the 
State. Wherever it is pure, and true to the Christian 
idea, there lives an institution conservative of all the 
nobler interests of society. Of this realm woman is the 



Woman and Home. 239 

queen. It takes its cue and its hue from her. If she is 
in the best sense womanly — if she is true and tender, 
loving and heroic, patient and self-devoted — she con- 
sciously or unconsciously organizes and puts in operation 
a set of influences that do more to mould the destiny of 
the nation than any man, uncrowned by power or elo- 
quence, can possibly effect. The men of the nation are 
what their mothers make them, as a rule ; and the voice 
which those men speak in the expression of their power 
is the voice of the women who bore and bred them. 
There can be no substitute for this. There is no other 
possible way in which the women of the nation can or- 
ganize their influence and power that will tell so benefi- 
cently upon society and the State. Neither woman nor 
the nation can afford to have home demoralized, or in 
any way deteriorated by the loss of her presence, or the 
lessening of her influence there. As a nation we rise or 
fall as the character of our homes, presided over by 
woman, rises or falls ; and the best gauge of our best 
prosperity is to be found in the measure by which these 
homes find multiplication in the land. In true marriage, 
and the struggle after the highest ideal of home life, is 
to be found the solution of more of the ugly problems 
that confront the present generation — moral, social, and 
political — than we have space to enumerate. 

Thus far few will differ with us, we imagine ; and fur- 
ther than this we do not care to go, except to say that 
whatever there may be in the schemes so industriously 
put forward for changing the position and sphere of wo- 
man which will tend to make home better, and its queen 
more modest and gentle and pure, shall have our earnest 
support. If an active competition with man in profes- 
sional or mercantile life will fit woman for home life, and 
help to endow her with those virtues whose illustration 
is so essential to her best influence in the family, let 



24-0 Every -Day Topics. 

her by all means engage in this competition. If the 
studies and apprenticeships necessary to make such a 
life as this successful are those which peculiarly fit wo- 
men to be wives and mothers, and prepare them to pre- 
side over the homes of the people, let us change our 
educational institutions to meet the necessity, and do it 
at once. If woman's power over the ballot-box, now 
exercised by shaping the voter, and lifting the moral 
tone of the nation at home, will be made better and 
more unselfish by giving her a hand in political strife, 
and the chance for an office, let her vote by all means. 
If those virtues and traits of character which are uni- 
versally recognized as womanly are nurtured by partici- 
pation in public life — if woman grows more modest, 
sweet, truthful, and trustworthy by familiarity with po- 
litical intrigues, or by engaging in public debates — if her 
home grows better and more influential for good in con- 
sequence of her absence from it, then we advocate 
without qualification her entrance upon public life at 
once, and demand that the broadest place shall be made 
for her. If the number of true marriages is to be in- 
creased by a policy that tends to make the sexes compet- 
itors with. each other for the prizes of wealth and place, 
and secures to any marked degree their independence 
of each other, then let that policy be adopted. 

This good, thus contingently specified, is the grand 
desideratum of our country and our time. Our suppo- 
sitions involve questions of vital, paramount importance-. 
They stand before and above all other questions con- 
nected with woman's work, woman's rights, and woman's 
future. They ought to be settled by a wise considera- 
tion and discussion ; and we believe that when they 
shall be settled thus, all good men and women will find 
themselves upon a common platform, and the questions 
which agitate us now will have vanished. 



AMUSEMENTS. 

Theatres and Theatre-going. 

THE recent discussion of the influence of theatres has 
brought up the old subject again, and called for a 
restatement of what we regard as the true and rational 
position of the Church upon the question. The radical 
mistake of the Protestant Church of this country is that 
lack of discrimination, in its condemnation of theatres, 
which has gone to the extreme of making that a sin in 
itself which is not a sin at all. To go to the theatre, for 
an evening's entertainment, is regarded by multitudes 
as a flagrant wrong. So wrong is it considered in itself, 
or so bad is it in example, that ministers are shut out of 
the theatre as a class, with sweeping completeness. For 
a clergyman to be seen in a theatre is to compromise 
his position and influence. We know that many clergy- 
men regard this as a hardship, for they have told us so ; 
but their unwise predecessors have made the bed for 
them, and they are obliged to lie in it. The public opin- 
ion that has been generated in the Church, by pulpit 
criticism and denunciation, has built a wall around the 
theatre so high that men holding responsible positions 
in the Church cannot cross it. 

For this position of the Church, the stage itself is very 
largely responsible. The stage has always been under 
strong temptations to self-degradation. If it had always 
Vol. I.— ii . 



242 Every-Day Topics. 

been pure ; if the amusements it has offered to the pub- 
lic had always been innocent ; if it had not at one period 
of its history been a breeding-place of vice ; if it had 
not presented strong attractions to those who seek the 
society of lewd women ; if profanity and poorly dis- 
guised obscenity had never had a place in the plays pre- 
sented ; if impure imaginations had not been cherished 
among the young by half-nude dancing girls ; in brief, 
if the animal nature — the lower nature — had not been 
addressed so persistently by those who have assumed 
the entertainment of the public, the Church would never 
have taken the position that it has. It is not to be won- 
dered at that the protest was strong, when the provoca- 
tion was so shameless. The older men of the present 
day remember the horrible "third tier" of their 
youth. They remember, too, the double entendre, the 
polite profanity, the broad jest, that woke the disgusting 
cheers of " the pit." It is no justification of an institu- 
tion that has arrogated to itself the title of " a school of 
morals," that it offered what was demanded, and what 
the public most willingly paid for. It was a part of the 
legitimate office of the stage to protect public morals 
and to educate the public into a pure taste. The enmity 
of the Church toward the stage has not been without 
cause. 

But the stage is better than it was, on the whole. 
We have vile theatres in New York, to-day— altogether 
too many of them — plays that degrade or vitiate the 
taste, and the morals of those who witness them — men 
and women on the boards who are base in character and 
life. On the other hand, we have theatres whose aims 
are high, and actors and actresses who have pride of 
personal character, and a desire and determination to 
hold their most interesting art to purity and respectabil- 
ity. These people — faithful husbands and wives, intel- 



Amusements. 243 

lectual men and women, good fathers, mothers, maidens, 
friends and citizens — naturally chafe under the whole- 
sale condemnation which the Church visits upon them. 
We cannot blame them for this. We can only ask them 
to be patient with the state of things which a multitude 
of their predecessors and many of their contemporaries 
have helped to bring about. The Church is gradually 
working toward their recognition, and they must give it 
time to move. 

There was a time, and it was not long ago, when cards 
were banished from every Christian household. The 
older men and women of the Church very well remember 
when a pack of cards found in a boy's trunk would be 
taken as proof that the devil had a very strong hold 
upon its owner. Millions of men and women have been 
bred to believe that card-playing was — with or without 
reason — a sin in itself. That time has passed away 
already, and the innocent little pasteboards have be- 
come a source of amusement in great multitudes of 
Christian families. Children never could see any reason 
in their exclusion, and the Church is stronger in the 
child's mind for the change that has occurred. Billiards 
were once so associated with vicious resorts and vicious 
practices, that a man disgraced himself by appearing 
where they were. Now a billiard-table is in nearly every 
house that can afford one, and is purchased in many in- 
stances as a home-guardian of the morals of the boys. 
Novel-reading was once as thoroughly under ban as 
theatre-going. We remember the time when the novel- 
reader hid his books — read them when he ought to have 
been asleep — stole their charms on rainy days, in gar- 
rets or on hay-mows, and then passed them into the 
hands of some other sly thief of pleasure, who still 
passed them on, until they were worn out. Well, the 
'first novels were poor. They gave false ideas of life, 



244 Every-Day Topics. 

and were condemned en masse by the Church ; but the 
Church found at an early day that it wanted novels for its 
own purposes. Now the great majority of Sunday-school 
books are novels of a religious sort, while every Chris- 
tian library holds Scott and Dickens and Thackeray ; 
and the public libraries and the reading-clubs, all over 
the land, find more readers for their novels than for any 
other class of books. They have become the sources of 
moral, political, and social instruction, as well as of gen- 
eral entertainment, within as well as without the Church. 

We allude to these sources of amusement and the 
great change that has occurred with regard to them, for 
the purpose of illustrating that which is certainly pro- 
gressing in relation to the theatre. We have parlor 
theatricals, and they are recognized more and more as 
harmless and instructive amusements. We have dra- 
matic exhibitions in our educational institutions. We 
go to the opera really for its music, but we are obliged 
to get this through the representation of the most vapid 
dramatic compositions that can be imagined. In short, 
we have acknowledged, in many ways, that the repre- 
sentation of a play is not wrong in itself, while our 
Christian travellers make their pilgrimages to Ober Am- 
mergau to witness a play that degrades the great Chris- 
tian tragedy to the commonplace of spectacular drama. 
The time is rapidly coming — provided, of course, that 
those who have the theatre in charge stand, as good 
men and women, by their obligations to the public, 
and uphold the dignity of their art — when Christians will 
seek amusement in their presence, from their perform- 
ances ; when they will discriminate between theatres as 
they do between novels, and when the premium of their 
presence and patronage will be offered to those who 
serve them conscientiously. 

As a people, we have no such superfluity of amuse- 



Amusements. 24$ 

merits and recreations that we can afford to hold one 
under ban that is in itself harmless and legitimate. 
We work under great pressure, and need much more 
recreation than we get. If a man thus pressed feels 
that a pure dramatic representation refreshes him, he 
ought to be at liberty to avail himself of it, and the time 
is certainly coming when he will do so. The histrionic 
art is as legitimate as any art, and any man or woman 
who practises it worthily and well deserves our honor 
— ay, our honor and our sympathy, for the art -life is 
a hard life to live under any circumstances. To be 
obliged to rely for a livelihood upon the plaudits of the 
multitude, and to be subject to the caprices of the press 
and the public, and the jealousies that are inseparable 
from all art-life, is a hardship from which the bravest man 
and woman may well shrink. If, among those who have 
so many temptations to strike a low key that they may 
at least please " the groundlings," there is a considera- 
ble number who appeal to the nobilities of human na- 
ture, let us give them our hands and help them to build 
up a pure taste in the public mind. We have only to 
remember that the theatre is with us, that it will stay, 
and that the Church has a great responsibility concern- 
ing the stage of the future. If it supposes that con- 
demning it at a street's length, and indiscriminately, will 
discharge its duty, it will find itself sadly mistaken. 

The Struggle for Wealth. 

No one can settle down in a European city or village 
for a month, and observe the laboring classes, without 
noticing a great difference between their aspirations, 
ambitions and habits, and those of corresponding class- 
es in this country. He may see great poverty in a con- 
tinental town, and men and women laboring severely 



246 Every-Day Topics. 

and faring meanly, and a hopeless gap existing between 
classes ; he may see the poor virtually the slaves of the 
rich ; but he will witness a measure of contentment and 
a daily participation in humble pleasures to which his 
eyes have been strangers at home. There is a sad side 
to this pleasant picture. Much of this apparent con- 
tentment and enjoyment undoubtedly comes from the 
hopelessness of the struggle for anything better. An 
impassable gulf exists between them and the educated 
and aristocratic classes — a gulf which they have recog- 
nized from their birth ; and, having recognized this, 
they have recognized their own limitations, and adapted 
themselves to them. Seeing just what they can do and 
cannot do, they very rationally undertake to get out of 
life just what their condition renders attainable. There 
is no far-off, crowning good for them to aim at ; so they 
try to get what they can on the way. They make much 
of fete-days, and social gatherings, and music, and do 
what they can to sweeten their daily toil, which they 
know must be continued while the power to labor lasts. 

In America it is very different. A humble backwoods- 
man sits in the presidential chair, or did sit there but 
recently ; a tailor takes the highest honors of the nation ; 
a canal-driver becomes a powerful millionaire ; a hum- 
ble school-teacher grows into a merchant prince, absorb- 
ing the labor and supplying the wants of tens of thou- 
sands. In city, State and national politics, hundreds 
and thousands may be counted of those who, by enter- 
prise, and self-culture, and self-assertion, have raised 
themselves from the humblest positions to influence and 
place. There is no impassable gulf between the low and 
the high. Every man holds the ballot, and, therefore, 
every man is a person of political power and importance. 
The ways of business enterprise are many, and the re- 
wards of success are munificent. Not a year, nor, in- 



Amusements. 247 

deed, a month, passes by, that does not illustrate the 
comparative ease with which poor men win wealth or 
acquire power. 

The consequence is that all but the wholly brutal are 
after some great good that lies beyond their years of 
toil. The European expects always to be a tenant ; the 
American intends before he dies to own the house he 
lives in. If city prices forbid this, he goes to the suburbs 
for his home. The European knows that life and labor 
are cheap, and that he cannot hope to win by them the 
wealth which will realize for him the dream of future 
ease ; the American finds his labor dear, and its rewards 
comparatively bountiful, so that his dream of wealth is 
a rational one. He therefore denies himself, works 
early and late, and bends his energies, and directs those 
of his family into profitable channels, all for the great 
good that beckons him on from the far-off, golden fu- 
ture. 

The typical American never lives in the present. If 
he indulges in a recreation, it is purely for health's sake, 
and at long intervals, or in great emergencies. He does 
not waste money on pleasure, and does not approve of 
those who do so. He lives in a constant fever of hope 
and expectation, or grows sour with hope deferred or 
blank disappointment. Out of it all grows the worship 
of wealth and that demoralization which results in un- 
scrupulousness concerning the methods of its acquire- 
ment. So America presents the anomaly of a laboring 
class with unprecedented prosperity and privileges, and 
unexampled discontent and discomfort. 

There is surely something better than this. There is 
something better than a life-long sacrifice of content and 
enjoyment for a possible wealth, which, however, may 
never be acquired, and which has not the power, when 
won, to yield its holder the boon which he expects it to 



248 Every -Day Topics. 

purchase. To withhold from the frugal wife the gown she 
desires, to deny her the journey which would do so much 
to break up the monotony of her home-life, to rear chil- 
dren in mean ways, to shut away from the family life a 
thousand social pleasures, to relinquish all amusements 
that have a cost attached to them, for wealth which may 
or may not come when the family life is broken up for- 
ever — surely this is neither sound enterprise nor wise 
economy. We would not have the American laborer, 
farmer and mechanic become improvident, but we would 
very much like to see them happier than they are, by 
resort to the daily social enjoyments which are always 
ready to their hand. Nature is strong in the young, and 
they will have society and play of some sort. It should 
remain strong in the old, and does remain strong in them, 
until it is expelled by the absorbing and subordinating 
passion for gain. Something of the Old World fond- 
ness for play, and daily or weekly indulgence in it, should 
become habitual among our workers. Toil would be 
sweeter if there were a reward at the end of it ; work 
would be gentler when used as a means for securing a 
pleasure which stands closer than an old age of ease ; 
character would be softer and richer and more child-like, 
when acquired among genial, every-day delights. The 
all-subordinating strife for wealth, carried on with fear- 
ful struggles and constant self-denials, makes us petty, 
irritable, and hard. When the whole American people 
have learned that a dollar's worth of pure pleasure is 
worth more than a dollar's worth of anything else under 
the sun ; that working is not living, but only the means 
by which we win a living ; that money is good for noth- 
ing except for what it brings of comfort and culture ; and 
that we live not in the future, but the present, they will 
be a happy people — happier and better than they have 
been. " The morrow shall take thought for the things 



Amusements. 249 

of itself," may not be an accepted maxim in political 
economy, but it was uttered by the wisest being that ever 
lived in the world, whose mission it was to make men 
both good and. happy. 

Summer Play. 

There are few sadder things in life than the dying out 
of the impulse and disposition to play. A man begins 
life with an overflow of vitality and animal spirits which 
makes him bright, genial and playful. He sympathizes 
with children, and even with the brutes, in their playful 
moods, enjoys society, and engages on all favorable occa- 
sions in recreative exercise of the body and amusements 
of the mind. Then comes the struggle for competency 
or wealth, and for twenty years, while his children are 
young, he works, settling more and more hopelessly into 
routine, until his competency or wealth is won, when 
he wakes to the fact that his impulse to play and his 
power to enjoy it are 'gone. He finds that he has lost 
his sympathy with youth, that he regards their pursuits 
as frivolous and tiresome, and that there is no inter- 
est in life to him except in daily toil, and in the quiet 
fireside rest which follows it, uninterrupted by social in- 
trusions from without, or social duties that call him forth 
from his retirement. 

What New York would become without its summer 
recreations we cannot imagine. The heat of the summer 
months, which not only dries up trade, but drives every 
man, woman and chilol beyond its limits who has the 
means to leave them, is the one saving power of city life. 
It is the play of the summer, the enforced idleness, the 
necessity of filling with amusement the lingering days, 
which keep the whole city from going on to perfect wreck. 
The steady strain of nine months 1 business, the feverish 



250 Every -Day Topics. 

anxieties of trade, the over-taxation of mind and body, the 
wearying round of social assemblies, if kept up through 
the whole year, would drive men mad or crush them into 
the grave. We have no doubt that people in the coun- 
try wonder why New Yorkers are willing to leave their 
splendid and commodious houses, and submit to the 
numberless inconveniences and inferior fare of way-side 
places. They would have but to spend one active winter 
in the city to understand it all. They would then know 
how precious the privilege would be to flee from hot 
sidewalks and burning walls, and the ceaseless din of 
wheels, and lie down, care-free, in the country silence, 
beneath an apple-tree, or a maple, with the fresh 
green earth around and the wide blue heaven above 
them. 

It is of the greatest importance to those who have the 
privilege of leaving the city in the summer that they go 
where they may be free, and where real play may be un- 
restricted by any of the conventionalities of society. 
There is no objection to the filling up of the fashionable 
watering-places by fashionable people who have nothing 
to do the whole year round but to play. There are enough 
of these to populate Newport and Saratoga and Long 
Branch, and there will be enough of those who are 
amused for a little time by looking at them to keep the 
hotels full ; but the well-to-do working men and women 
can do infinitely better for themselves and their children 
than to seek dwellings in such places for the summer. 
What they want is liberty, away from the centres of ob- 
servation, where they can dress as they choose and do 
what they like. The very soul o f f play is liberty, and 
there can be no true recreation without it. 

Nothing can be more cruel and nothing more fool- 
ish than to place children where they must be dressed 
every day in fresh and fashionable clothes, and their 



Amusements. 251 

freedom to play curtailed for the sake of appearances. 
What childhood needs is perfect freedom among the 
things of nature — freedom to romp, to make mud-pies, 
to leap fences, to row, to fish, to climb trees, to chase 
butterflies, to gather wild-flowers, to live out of doors 
from morning until night, and to do all those things 
that innocent and healthy childhood delights in, in cheap, 
strong clothes provided for the purpose. Exactly that 
which childhood needs, manhood and womanhood needs 
— perfect liberty and perfect carelessness. So, whether 
the dweller by the sea go inland for his summer play, or 
the resident of the inland city go to the sea, he should 
seek some spot unvisited by those devoted to fashionable 
display, and pass his time in unrestricted communion 
with nature, and in those pursuits and amusements 
which, without let or hinderance, perform the office of 
recreation. 

It is pleasant to think of these hundreds of thousands 
who scatter out into the country like spray beaten off from 
the city walls by the waves of summer. The weary men 
of study or of business, the tired women, the pale chil- 
dren — how they will dream and wander and rest ! Thou- 
sands of greedy eyes will drink in the freshness and 
beauty of the sea by day, and sleep through its nightly 
lullaby. They will bathe in its waters, and sail upon its 
bosom, and live and grow strong upon its treasured life. 
Other thousands will take themselves to some quiet 
country village, with pleasant social surroundings, and 
with village bells to make Sunday-morning music for 
them. Still other thousands will climb the hills, or roam 
through the woods. There will be fishing by day and 
floating for deer at night among the Adirondacks, or 
among the forests of Maine. Every inland and ocean 
steamer will bear some of them. Every railroad train 
will be used in their service. It is the great play-time 



252 Every - Day Topics. 

of city life. The farmer has his rest and recreation in 
winter ; the citizen, only in the summer. 

While it is pleasant to think of all this play, it is sad 
to think of those who are by necessity kept at home. 
For those there is the park, the most beautiful pleasure- 
ground in the world — if they will but use it — and the bay, 
over which the boats are pushing all the time. An ex- 
cursion is an every-day affair, and the country and the 
sea are at the very doors of us all. And for the poor 
children — we have seen what a single newspaper has 
done and can do for them. The provision for them 
made once should be made again and again on an en- 
larged scale, so that no poor, tired dweller on Manhattan 
Island may be compelled to pass the summer without 
one day of freedom and privilege on the fresh sea or the 
green and odor-breathing shore. 

Novel- Reading. 

The novel has become, for good or for evil, the daily 
food of the civilized world. It is given to youngest 
childhood in Mother Goose and other extravagant and 
grotesque inventions, it is placed in the hands of older 
childhood and youth through the distributing agencies 
of a hundred thousand publishing houses and Sunday- 
school libraries, and prepared for the eyes of the adult 
world by every magazine and weekly newspaper that finds 
its way into Christian homes. Among all peoples and 
all sorts of people, of every age and of every religious 
and.social school, it is the only universally accepted form 
of literature. History, poetry, philosophy, science, so- 
cial ethics and religion, are accepted respectively by 
classes of readers, larger or smaller ; but the novel is 
read by multitudes among all these classes, and by the 
great multitudes outside of them who rarely look into 



Amusements. 253 

anything else. The serial novel is now an invariable 
component of the magazine in America and England ; 
the French feuilleton has been so long established as to 
be regarded as a necessary element in the newspaper ; 
while in Germany, the land of scholars and philosophers 
and scientific explorers, the story-tellers are among the 
most ingenious and prolific in the world. 

It all comes of the interest which the human mind 
takes in human life. If history and biography are less 
read than the novel, it is because the life found in them 
is less interesting or in a less interesting form. The de- 
tails of individual experience and of social life are far 
more engaging to ordinary minds than the proceedings of 
parliaments and the intercourse of nations. From these 
latter the life of the great masses is far removed. The 
men and women whom one meets at a social gathering, 
and the dramatic by-play and personal experience of 
such an occasion, will absorb a multitude of minds far 
beyond the proceedings of a board of arbitration that 
holds in its hands the relations of two great nations, and 
possibly the peace of the world. 

The daily life of the people is not in politics, or phi- 
losophy, or religious discussion. They eat and drink, 
they buy and sell, they lose and gain, they love and hate, 
they plot and counterplot ; their lives are filled with 
doubts and fears and hopes, and realizations or disap- 
pointments of hope ; and when they read, they choose to 
read of these. It is in these experiences that all classes 
meet on common ground, and this is the ground of the 
novel. In truth, the novel is social history, personal 
biography, religion, morals, and philosophy, realized or 
idealized, all in one. Nay, more : it is the only social 
history we have. If the social history of the last hundred 
years in England and America has not been written in 
the novels of the last fifty, it has not been written at all. 



254 Every -Day Topics. 

In the proportion that these novels have been accepted 
and successful, have their plots, characters, spirit, prop- 
erties and belongings been taken from real life. There 
is no form of literature in which the people have been 
more inexorably determined to have truthfulness than in 
that of fiction. History, under the foul influence of par- 
tisanship, has often won success by lying, but fiction 
never. Under the inspirations of ideality it has present- 
ed to us some of the very purest forms of truth which 
we possess. 

So universally accepted is the novel that it has be- 
come one of the favorite instruments of reform. If a 
great wrong is to be righted, the sentiments, convictions 
and efforts of the people are directed against it through 
the means of a novel. It is mightier to this end than 
conventions, speeches, editorials and popular rebellions. 
If a social iniquity is to be uncovered that it may be 
cured, the pen of the novelist is the power employed. 
The adventurer, the drunkard, the libertine, the devotee 
of fashion and folly, are all punctured and impaled by 
the same instrument, and held up to the condemnation 
or contempt of the world. At the same time, we are 
compelled to look to our novels rather than to our his- 
tories and biographies for our finest and purest ideali- 
zations of human character and human society. There 
is nothing more real and nothing more inspiring in all 
history and cognate literature than the characters which 
fiction, by the hands of its masters, has presented to the 
world. 

There was a time when the Church was afraid of the 
novel ; and it is not to be denied that there are bad 
novels — novels which ought not to be read, and which 
are read simply because there are people as bad as the 
novels are ; but the Church itself is now the most indus- 
trious producer of the novel. It is found next to impos- 



Amusements. 255 

sible to induce a child to read anything but stories ; and 
therefore the shelves of our Sunday-school libraries are 
full of them. These stories might be better, yet they 
undoubtedly contain the best presentation of religious 
truth that has been made to the infantile mind. The 
pictures of character and life that are to be found in a 
multitude of these books cannot fail of giving direction 
and inspiration to those for whom they are painted. 
Among much that is silly and preposterous and dissipat- 
ing, there is an abundance that is wholesome and su- 
premely valuable. Religious novels, too, have become 
a large and tolerably distinct class of books, of very wide 
acceptance and usefulness in the hands of men and wo- 
men. The Church, least of all estates, perhaps, could 
now afford to dispense with the novel, because it is 
found that the novel will be produced and universally 
consumed. 

The trash that is poured out by certain portions of the 
press will continue to be produced, we suppose, while it 
finds a market. The regret is that such stuff can find a 
market, but tastes will be crude and morals low in this 
imperfect world for some time to come. Let us be com- 
forted in the fact that sensuality tires, that there is edu- 
cation indirect, if not direct, in coarse art, and that there 
will naturally come out of this large eating of trash a de- 
sire for more solid food. A long look at the yellow 
wearies, and then the eye asks for blue. If we look back 
upon our own experience, we shall doubtless find that 
we demand a very different novel now from that which 
formerly satisfied or fascinated us, and that we ourselves 
have passed through a process of development which 
helps us to pronounce as trash much that formerly 
pleased us. Let us hope for the world that which we have 
realized for ourselves. 



256 Every -Day Topics. 

Winter Amusements. 

One of the most puzzling questions which parents have 
to deal with is that which relates to the amusements of 
their children, and especially of those among them who 
have reached young manhood and young womanhood. 
The most of us are too apt to forget that we have once 
been young, and that, while we are tired enough with 
our daily work to enjoy our evenings in quiet by our 
firesides, the young are overflowing with vitality, which 
must have vent somewhere. The girls and young women 
particularly, who cannot join in the rough sports of the 
boys, have, as a rule, a pretty slow time of it. They go 
to parties when invited ; but parties are all alike, and 
soon become a bore. A healthy social life does not con- 
sist in packing five hundred people in a box, feeding 
them with ices, and sending them home with aching 
limbs, aching eyes, and a first-class chance for diph- 
theria. But the young must have social life. They must 
have it regularly ; and how to have it satisfactorily — with 
freedom, without danger to health of body and soul, 
with intellectual stimulus and growth— is really one of 
the most important of social questions. 

It is not generally the boy and the girl who spend 
their days in school who need outside amusement or so- 
ciety. They get it, in large measure, among their com- 
panions, during the day ; and, as their evenings are 
short, they get along very comfortably with their little 
games and their recreative reading. It is the young 
woman who has left school and the young man who is 
preparing for life, in office or counting-room, in the 
shop or on the farm, who need social recreation which 
will give significance to their lives, and, at the same 
time, culture to their minds. If they fail to unite culture 
with their recreations, they never get it. It is not harsh 



Amusements. 257 

to say that nine young men in every ten go into life 
without any culture. The girls do better, because, first, 
they take to it more naturally, and, second, because, in 
the absence of other worthy objects of life, this is always 
before them and always attainable. The great point, 
then, is to unite culture with amusement and social en- 
joyment. Dancing and kindred amusements are well 
enough in their time and way, but they are childish. 
There must be something better ; there is something 
better. 

It is an easy thing to establish, either in country or 
city neighborhoods, the reading-club. Twenty-five 
young men and women of congenial tastes, habits, and 
social belongings can easily meet in one another's 
houses, once during every week, through five or six 
months of the year. With a small fund they can buy 
good books, and over these, read aloud by one and 
another of their number, they can spend an hour and a 
half most pleasantly and profitably. They will find in 
these books topics of conversation for the remainder 
of the time they spend together. If they can illumi- 
nate the evening with music, all the better. Whatever 
accomplishments may be in the possession of different 
members of the club may be drawn upon to give variety 
to the interest of the occasion. This is entirely practi- 
cable everywhere. It is more profitable than amateur 
theatricals, and less exhaustive of time and energy. It 
can be united with almost any literary object. The 
"Shakspere Club" is nothing but a reading-club, de- 
voted to the., study of a single author; and Shakspere 
may well engage a club for a single winter. Such a 
club would cultivate the art of good reading, which is 
one of the best and most useful of all accomplishments. 
It would cultivate thought, imagination, taste. In brief, 
the whole tendency of the reading-club is toward cul- 



258 Every - Day Top ics. 

ture — the one thing, notwithstanding all our educational 
advantages, the most deplorably lacking in the average 
American man and woman. 

There was a time when the popular lecture was a 
source not only of amusement, but of culture — when it 
stimulated thought, developed healthy opinion, conveyed 
instruction, and elevated the taste. The golden days 
when Sumner, Everett and Holmes, Starr King and 
Professor Mitchell, Bishop Huntington and Bishop 
Clark, Beecher and Chapin, Emerson, Curtis, Taylor 
and Phillips were all actively in the field, were days of 
genuine progress. Few better things could happen to 
the American people than the return of such days as 
those were ; and the " lecture system," as it has been 
called, is declining in its usefulness and interest, simply 
because it has not men like these to give it tone and 
value. A few of the old set linger in the field, but 
death, old age, and absorbing pursuits have withdrawn 
the most of them. The platform is not what it w T as. 
The literary trifler, the theatrical reader, the second or 
third rate concert, have dislodged the reliable lecture- 
goers, and the popular lecture will certainly be killed 
if bad management can kill it. The standard has not 
been raised, or even maintained ; it has been lowered — 
lowered specially, and with direct purpose, to meet the 
tastes of the vulgar crowd. 

Well, the young people, in whose hands the "lecture 
system " has always been, can mend all this, if they 
consider it worth the pains. Certainly the coming into 
contact with a thoroughly vitalized man of brains is a 
very stimulating experience. The privilege of doing 
so should not be lightly relinquished, and whenever a 
course of lectures is well conducted it ought to meet 
with a generous patronage from all who have young peo- 
ple on their hands to be entertained and improved. 



Amusements. 259 

But even the lecture, desirable as it is, is not neces- 
sary. In a city like New York there ought to be five 
hundred clubs of young people, established for the pur- 
poses of social and intellectual amusement, with culture 
in view as the great ultimate end. The exercises may 
take a great many forms which it is not necessary for us 
even to suggest. Books may be read, original papers 
may be presented, musical rehearsals may form a part 
of the entertainment, products of art may be exhibited, 
there may be dramatic and conversational practice, and 
practice in French and German. There is no limit to 
the variety of exercises that may be profitably entered 
upon. And what is good for the young people of the 
great cities will be just as good for young people every- 
where. 

A Word for Our Wanderers. 

There is a great deal of private and a measure of 
public-fault-finding with the fact that multitudes of our 
American people go abroad to spend their time and 
money. We have forgotten the number of millions 
which it is calculated are spent in going up and down 
and walking to and fro in Europe — frittered away on gew- 
gaws, invested in silks which neither pay a revenue to 
the Government nor a profit to the American shop- 
keepers, expended on foreign steamers in the outward 
and homeward passages, etc., etc. It never occurs to 
the growlers, we presume, that we are getting from the 
other side, all the time, more than we send over there. 
In the first place, there are always here, with annually 
increasing numbers, a considerable throng of tourists 
who spend liberally. They are nearly all of the richer 
class, for America is not a country in which a foreigner 
can live more cheaply than he can at home. Of course 



260 Every-Day Topics. 

this class cannot offset the throng we annually send to 
Europe and steadily support there, but every incoming 
vessel brings its tribute of immigrants, who come here 
to remain. We have no statistics, but it must be true 
that these, who bring all their worldly possessions, im- 
port, in the aggregate, an amount far surpassing what 
we export among our travellers. We send by fifties, 
they come by thousands. They come with their little 
hoards accumulated through frugal generations, and 
these little hoards amount, in a single year, to a very 
large sum. But they bring something better than money 
— life and industry. Every man and woman, as a rule, 
is an addition to the productive capital of the country. 
How incalculably large have been the contributions 
of the immigrant to the wealth, the greatness, and the 
comfort of America ! The immigrant has dug all our 
canals, built all our railroads, and been the burden- 
bearer in all enterprises requiring brawn and bone. 
There are nine chances in ten that the person who 
cooks what we eat, waits upon us at table, milks the 
cow, hoes the corn, drives the coach, grooms the horse, 
mows the hay, mans the vessel, digs the ditch, spins the 
cotton, washes the clothes and makes the bed, is a for- 
eigner. Indeed, it is more than probable that a full 
moiety of all the money which Americans spend abroad 
is won from the profits on foreign labor. It is well 
enough to remember this, and not to grudge the money 
which buys abroad so much pleasure, instruction, and 
health for our weary and overworked people. 

There is another class of fault-finders who have their 
little fling at the wanderers — a fling somewhat worn by 
long use, but still quite effective when employed against 
or among the thoughtless. The stay-at-homes need 
something, of course, to console them and to keep 
themselves in countenance ; and we hear from their 



Amusements. 261 

wise lips such utterances as these: " They had much 
better stay at home and travel in their own country than 
to go to Europe." " I should be ashamed to go to Eu- 
rope until I had seen something of America." "If I 
hadn't seen Niagara, or the Mammoth Cave, or the Mis- 
sissippi River, I should be ashamed to travel abroad." 
Any one of these wise statements flung at a man's head 
is regarded as sufficient to settle him if he is a wanderer 
abroad, and happens not to have been a great traveller 
at home. It is supposed, indeed, to decide the whole 
matter — to condemn the man who travels into foreign 
lands, and justify the man who sticks to his own door- 
yard and does not travel anywhere. 

Well, travel in one's own country is very desirable, if 
a man has the time and can afford the expense and the 
hardship ; but for a New Yorker to go to Niagara in- 
volves the travel of nine hundred miles out and back by 
rail. To see Chicago or any of the Western cities costs 
two thousand miles of travel. To see the Yosemite in- 
volves six thousand miles of travel. There is not a 
great object of natural interest in the country a sight of 
which does not cost a great deal of money and a great 
deal of fatigue. To go to the Far West, to climb the 
Colorado Mountains, or to visit any of the great objects 
of natural curiosity in that region, involves hardship 
that ladies particularly, unless exceptionally rugged, 
cannot endure at all. And when we have seen all, what 
have we seen ? Grand things, to be sure — wonderful 
works of nature — and nothing else. Our cities are new, 
and with a brief history, confined almost entirely to the 
details of their quick material development. We see 
everywhere the beginnings of the life of a great nation, 
and they bear a striking resemblance to each other. 

Now, when a man finds himself with money to spend 
he likes to go where he can get the most for it. He 



262 Every -Day Topics. 

takes himself and his family to Europe, and finds him- 
self everywhere on historic ground. He can hardly trav- 
el twenty-five miles without meeting with something — 
some majestic river, some castle,, some old cathedral, 
some gallery of art, some palace, some ancient battle- 
ground — which charms his attention. To the traveller 
London is a vast storehouse of historic associations. 
Cheapside, the Strand, Piccadilly, Threadneedle Street 
— all these are names just as familiar to him as Broad- 
way ; and a hundred names of literary men, statesmen, 
poets, philosophers, are associated with them. West- 
minster Abbey is a place to meditate and weep in. To 
sit down in this stately and hallowed pile is to sit down 
with the worthiest of fifty generations. The Tower, the 
great Museum, the picture galleries, the ten thousand 
other objects of interest, compel the traveller to feel 
that he is in another world, to whose wealth almost 
countless generations have contributed. Scotland is 
like fairy-land to him. He walks over the territory 
where Sir Walter walked. His lungs inhale the same 
air, his eyes look upon the same hills, and valleys, and 
streams that inspired the Wizard. He crosses the Chan- 
nel into sunny France, the land of the vine. He finds a 
new people, with another language, other traditions, 
another civilization. He reaches its beautiful capital, 
visits its wonderful churches, traverses the Louvre day 
after day until his mind is surfeited with beauty, mingles 
with the gay life upon the Champs Elysees and the 
Boulevards, rides in the Bois, goes to Fontainebleau 
and Versailles and all the beautiful environs, no one of 
which is without its special historic interest or its treas- 
ury of art or architecture. 

From France he goes to Switzerland, a country con- 
taining the most interesting natural scenery, perhaps, in 
the world, and all fitted up for exhibition. The smooth- 



Amusements. 263 

est roads sweep over the highest mountain-passes. There 
are guides ready and competent for every possible ex- 
pedition ; mules saddled and bridled, and ready to bear 
the traveller anywhere. The hotels are perfection, and 
every provision is made for comfort. There are thou- 
sands of travellers, representing all nationalities, who 
are never-failing subjects of interest and amusement. 
And there are the Matterhorn, and the Jungfrau, and 
Mont Blanc ! There is but one Switzerland in the world. 
One can stand in its sunny vineyards and gaze upon 
fields of everlasting snow. One can sit in the comfort or 
luxury of his hotel, and watch the mountains as they 
change at sunset from jagged brown and shining white 
to purple cloud, and from purple cloud to some celestial 
semblance of a cloud, until he feels that he has reached 
the spiritual meaning of it all, and has learned some- 
thing of the secrets of the other world. 

From Switzerland he goes to Italy. He lingers among 
the lakes, he pauses in Genoa, climbs the tower at Pisa, 
sails some bright morning into the Bay of Naples, with 
Vesuvius smoking on his right and the beautiful city 
fronting him like a vision of heaven after the long toss- 
ing on the bosom of a bluer Mediterranean than he ever 
before dreamed of. He visits Pompeii asleep on one side 
of the bay, and Baise, the old watering-place of the Ro- 
mans, quite as soundly asleep on the other. He eats 
oranges in Sorrento, and wishes he could stay there for- 
ever ; and then he goes to Rome— to St. Peter's, to the 
galleries, to the Coliseum, to the marvellous churches, 
to the Catacombs, and finds that it would take years to 
exhaust what it holds for him of interest and instruction. 
He glides in the moonlight over the grand canal in Ven- 
ice, wanders through the Doge's Palace, mounts the 
Campanile, and thinks by day and dreams by night of 
the old life, the old commerce, the old and dying civili- 



264 Every -Day Topics. 

zation. He visits the marble-flowering garden at Milan, 
passing beautiful old cities, always leaving behind un- 
seen more than he sees, and still he has all Germany, 
Russia, Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Spain left. 

But he has spent a year, and got more pleasure for 
his money, more priceless memories, more useful knowl- 
edge, more culture in language, and manners, and art 
than it would be possible for him to get at home in fifty 
years. This may be " treason ; " and, if it is, we hope 
it will be " made the most of." The truth is, our coun- 
try is young. Our architecture is new and raw, our gal- 
leries of art are yet to be created, and nothing among us 
has retired so far into the past that a halo of romance 
has gathered over it. To stand in a foreign church or 
cathedral, and remember that it was old when our 
country was discovered, is to realize how young our na- 
tion is. It is not natural scenery that our wanderers go 
to see, though that is not lacking. It is the objects of 
human interest that they seek — the records of old civili- 
zation with which every city is crowded, and which look 
down from pathetic ruins or time-defying towers, from 
every hill-top and mountain. The tide of foreign travel 
cannot be diverted from these by all the croaking in the 
world, and ousrht not to be. 



THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 

The Liquor Interest. 

^PRAMP, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching : how 
-*- many of them? Sixty thousand! Sixty full regi- 
ments, every man of which will, before twelve months 
shall have completed their course, lie down in the grave 
of a drunkard ! Every year during the past decade has 
witnessed the same sacrifice ; and sixty regiments stand 
behind this army ready to take its place. It is to be re- 
cruited from our children and our children's children. 
" Tramp, tramp, tramp" — the sounds come to us in the 
echoes of the footsteps of the army just expired ; tramp, 
tramp, tramp — the earth shakes with the tread of the 
host now passing : tramp, tramp, tramp, comes to us 
from the camp of the recruits. A great tide of life flows 
resistlessly to its death. What in God's name are they 
fighting for? The privilege of pleasing an appetite, of 
conforming to a social usage, of filling sixty thousand 
homes with shame and sorrow, of loading the public 
with the burden of pauperism, of crowding our prison- 
houses with felons, of detracting from the productive in- 
dustries of the country, of ruining fortunes and breaking 
hopes, of breeding disease and wretchedness, of destroy- 
ing both body and soul in hell before their time. 

The prosperity of the liquor interest, covering every 
department of it, depends entirely on the maintenance 
Vol. I.— 12 



266 Every -Day Topics. 

of this army. It cannot live without it. It never did live 
without it. So long as the liquor interest maintains its 
present prosperous condition, it will cost America the 
sacrifice of sixty thousand men every year. The effect 
is inseparable from the cause. The cost to the country 
of the liquor traffic is a sum so stupendous that any 
figures which we should dare to give would convict us 
of trifling. The amount of life absolutely destroyed, the 
amount of industry sacrificed, the amount of bread 
transformed into poison, the shame, the unavailing sor- 
row, the crime, the poverty, the pauperism, the bru- 
tality, the wild waste of vital and financial resources, 
make an aggregate so vast — so incalculably vast — that 
the only wonder is that the American people do not rise 
as one man and declare that this great curse shall exist 
no longer. Dilettante conventions are held on the sub- 
ject of peace, by men and women who find it necessary 
to fiddle to keep themselves awake. A hue-and-cry 
is raised about woman-suffrage, as if any wrong which 
may be involved in woman's lack of the suffrage could 
be compared to the wrongs attached to the liquor in- 
terest ! 

Does any sane woman doubt that women are suffering 
a thousand times more from rum than from any political 
disability ? 

The truth is that there is no question before the Amer- 
ican people to-day that begins to match in importance 
the temperance question. The question of American 
slavery was never anything but a baby by the side of 
this ; and we prophesy that within ten years, if not 
within five, the whole country will be awake to it, and 
divided upon it. The organizations of the liquor interest, 
the vast funds at its command, the universal feeling 
among those whose business is pitted against the national 
prosperity and the public morals — these are enough to 



The Temperance Question. 267 

show that, upon one side of this matter at least, the 
present condition of things and the social and political 
questions that lie in the immediate future, are appre- 
hended. The liquor interest knows there is to be a great 
struggle, and is preparing to meet it. People both in 
this country and in Great Britain are beginning to see 
the enormity of this business — are beginning to realize 
that Christian civilization is actually poisoned at its 
fountain, and that there can be no purification of it until 
the source of the poison is dried up. 

The country is to be sincerely congratulated on the 
fact that the wine interest of the United States does not 
promise much. Little native wine, after all our pains- 
taking, finds its way to a gentleman's table. The Cali- 
fornia wines are a disappointment and a failure, and the 
Western wines are the same. Neither the dry nor the 
sparkling Catawba takes the place of anything imported. 
They are not popular wines, and we congratulate the 
country that they never can be. The lager beer interest 
is endeavoring, in convention, to separate itself from 
the whiskey interest, claiming to be holier and more re- 
spectable than that. They are all to be lumped to- 
gether. They are all opposed to sobriety, and in the 
end we shall find them all fighting side by side for ex- 
istence against the determined indignation of a long- 
suffering people. 

A respectable English magazine reports, as a fact of 
encouraging moment, that of the fifty thousand clergy- 
men of the Church of England as many as four thousand 
actually abstain from the use of spirits ! So eleven- 
twelfths of the clergymen of the English Church consent 
to be dumb dogs on the temperance question ! How 
large the proportion of wine-drinking clergymen may 
be in this country we do not know, but we do know that 
a wine-glass stops the mouth on the subject of temper- 



268 Every -Day Topics. 

2nn.ce, whoever may hold it. A wine-drinking clergy- 
man is a soldier disarmed. He is not only not worth a 
straw in the fight : he is a part of the impedimenta of 
the temperance army. We have a good many such to 
carry, who ought to be ashamed of themselves, and who 
very soon will be. Temperance laws are being passed 
by the various Legislatures, which they must sustain or 
go over, soul and body, to the liquor interest and influ- 
ence. Steps are being taken on behalf of the public 
health, morals, and prosperity, which they must ap- 
prove by voice and act, or they must consent to be left 
behind and left out. There can be no concession and 
no compromise on the part of temperance men, and no 
quarter to the foe. The great curse of our country and 
our race must be destroyed. 

Meantime the tramp, tramp, tramp sounds on — the 
tramp of sixty thousand yearly victims. Some are be- 
sotted and stupid, some are wild with hilarity and dance 
along the dusty way, some reel along in pitiful weak- 
ness, some wreak their mad and murderous impulses 
on one another or on the helpless women and children 
whose destinies are united to theirs, some stop in way- 
side debaucheries and infamies for a moment, some go 
bound in chains from which they seek in vain to 
wrench their bleeding wrists, and all are poisoned in 
body and soul, and all are doomed to death. Wherever 
they move, crime, poverty, shame, wretchedness and 
despair hover in awful shadows. There is no bright 
side to the picture. We forget : there is just one. 
The men who make this army get rich. Their children 
are robed in purple and fine linen, and live upon dain- 
ties. Some of them are regarded as respectable mem- 
bers of society, and they hold conventions to protect 
their interests ! Still the tramp, tramp, tramp goes on, 
and before this article can see the light, five thousand 



The Temperance Question. 269 

more of our poisoned army will have hidden their shame 
and disgrace in the grave. 

The Delusions of Drink. 

King Solomon has the credit of being the wisest man 
that ever lived, and he declared that he who is de- 
ceived by wine, the mocker, and strong drink the rag- 
ing, is not wise. The delusions of drink are as old as 
drink itself, and are as prevalent now as in Solomon's 
time. There are men who honestly believe that alco- 
holic drink is good for them ; yet there is not one of 
them who would touch it except as a prescribed medi- 
cine if it were not for its pleasant taste. The delusion 
touching its healthfulness grows out of the desire to jus- 
tify an appetite which may either be natural or ac- 
quired. If a man likes whiskey or wine, he likes to think 
that it is good for him, and he will take some pains to 
prove that it is so, both to himself and others. 

Now, alcohol is a pure stimulant. There is not so 
much nutriment in it as there is in a chip. It never 
added anything to the permanent forces of life, and 
never can add anything. Its momentary intensification 
of force is a permanent abstraction of force from the 
drinker's capital stock. All artificial excitants bring 
exhaustion. The physicians know this, and the sim- 
plest man's reason is quite capable of comprehending it. 
If any man supposes that daily drink, even in small 
quantities, is conducive to his health, he is deluded. 
If he possesses a sluggish temperament, he may be able 
to carry his burden without much apparent harm, but 
burden it is, and burden it will always be. 

After a man has continued moderate drinking long 
enough, then comes a change — a demand for more 
drink. The old quantity does not suffice. The powers 



270 Every -Day Topics. 

which have been insensibly undermined, clamor, under 
the pressure of business, for increased stimulation. It 
is applied, and the machine starts off grandly ; the man 
feels strong, his form grows portly, and he works under, 
constant pressure. Now he is in a condition of great 
danger, but the delusion is upon him that he is in no 
danger at all. At last, however, drink begins to take 
the place of food. His appetite grows feeble and fit- 
ful. He lives on his drink, and, of course, there is but 
one end to this — viz., death! It may come suddenly, 
through the collapse of all his powers, or through paral- 
ysis, or it may come slowly through atrophy and ema- 
ciation. His friends see that he is killing himself, but 
he cannot see it at all. He walks in a delusion from his 
early manhood to his death. 

A few weeks ago one of our city physicians publicly 
read a paper on the drinking habits of women. It was 
a thoughtful paper, based on a competent knowledge of 
facts. It ought to have been of great use to those wo- 
men of the city who are exposed to the dangers it por- 
trayed, and especially to those who have acquired the 
habits it condemned. Soon afterward there appeared 
in the columns of a daily paper a protest from a writer 
who ought to be a good deal more intelligent than he is, 
against the doctor's conclusions. The health and phy- 
sique of the beer-drinking Englishwoman were placed 
over against the health and physique of the water-drink- 
ing American women, to the disadvantage of the latter. 
The man is deluded. It is not a year since Sir Henry 
Thompson, one of the most eminent medical men in 
England — a man notoriously beyond the reach of any 
purely Christian considerations— declared against the 
beer-drinking of England on strictly sanitary grounds. 
Our litterateur declares that the Englishwoman can out- 
walk her American sister. That depends entirely upon 



The Temperance Question. 271 

the period of life when the task is undertaken. The 
typical Englishwoman who has stood by the beer diet 
until she is more than forty years old is too fat to walk 
anywhere easily out-of-doors, or gracefully within. 

During our late civil war this matter of drinking for 
health's sake was thoroughly tried. A stock of experi- 
ence and observation was acquired that ought to have 
lasted for a century. Again and again, thousands and 
thousands of times, was it proved that the man who 
drank nothing was the better man. He endured more, 
he fought better, he came out of the war healthier than 
the man who drank. Nothing is more easily demon- 
strable than that the liquor used by the two armies, 
among officers and men alike, was an unmitigated curse 
to them. It disturbed the brains and vitiated the coun- 
cils of the officers, and debilitated and demoralized the 
men. Yet all the time the delusion among officers and 
men was that there were both comfort and help in 
whiskey. 

The delusions of drink are numberless, but there is 
one of them which stands in the way of reform so decid- 
edly that it calls for decided treatment. We allude to 
the notion that it is a nice thing to drink nice liquors or 
wines at one's home, to offer them to one's friends, and 
to make them minister to good-fellowship at every social 
gathering, while it is a very different thing to drink bad 
liquor, in bad places, and in large quantities. A man 
full of good wine feels that he has a right to look with 
contempt upon the Irishman who is full of bad whiskey. 
It is not a long time since the election of a professor in a 
British university was opposed solely on the ground that 
he neither drank wine nor offered it to his friends ; and 
when, by a small majority, his election was effected, the 
other professors decided not to recognize him socially. 
There are thus two men whom these sticklers for wine 



272 Every-Day Topics. 

despise — viz., the man who gets drunk on bad liquor, and 
the man who drinks no liquor at all. Indeed, they regard 
the latter with a hatred or contempt which they do not 
feel for the poor drunkard. The absolute animosity 
with which many men in society regard one who is 
conscientiously opposed to wine-drinking could only 
spring from a delusion in regard to the real nature of 
their own habits. The sensitiveness of these people on 
this subject, however, shows that they suspect the delu- 
sion of which they are the victims. They claim to be 
on the side of temperance. They deprecate drunken- 
ness, and really don't see what is to be done about it. 
They wish that men would be more rational in their 
enjoyment of the good things of the world, etc., etc. ; 
but their eyes seem blinded to the fact that they stand 
in the way of all reform. The horrible drunkenness of 
the larger cities of Great Britain, with which no hell that 
America holds can compare for a moment, can never be 
reformed until the drinking habits of the English clergy 
and the English gentry are reformed. With eleven- 
twelfths of the British clergy wine-drinkers, and water- 
drinkers tabooed in society, and social drinking the 
fashion in all the high life of the realm, the workman 
will stand by his gin, brutality will reign in its own 
chosen centres undisturbed, and those centres will in- 
creasingly become what, to a frightful extent, they al- 
ready are — festering sores upon the body social, and 
stenches in the nostrils of the world. 

The habits, neither of Great Britain nor America, will 
be improved until men of influence in every walk of life 
are willing to dispense with their drinking customs. 
Hundreds of thousands of English-speaking men go to 
a drunkard's grave every year. There is nothing in 
sanitary considerations as they relate to the moderate 
drinker, and surely nothing in the pleasures of the 



The Temperance Question. 273 

moderate drinker, to mitigate this curse. It is all a 
delusion. The water-drinker is the healthy man and 
the happy man. Spirits, wine, beer, alcoholic bever- 
ages of all sorts, are a burden and a bane, and there is 
no place where a good man can stand unshadowed by 
a fatal delusion, except upon the safe ground of total 
abstinence. Until that ground is taken, and held, by 
good men everywhere, there can be no temperance re- 
form. The wine-drinkers of England and America have 
the whiskey- drinkers in their keeping. What do they 
propose to do with them ? 

The Wine Question in Society. 

It is universally admitted among sensible and candid 
people that drunkenness is the great curse of our social 
and national life. It is not characteristically American, 
for the same may be said with greater emphasis of the 
social and national life of Great Britain ; but it is one 
of those things about which there is no doubt. Cholera 
and small-pox bring smaller fatality, and almost infi- 
nitely smaller sorrow. There are fathers and mothers, 
and sisters and wives, and innocent and wondering chil- 
dren, within every circle that embraces a hundred lives, 
who grieve to-day over some hopeless victim of the se- 
ductive destroyer. In the city and in the country — 
North, East, South and West — there are men and wo- 
men who cannot be trusted with wine in their hands 
— men and women who are conscious, too, that they are 
going to destruction, and who have ceased to fight an 
appetite that has the power to transform every soul and 
every home it occupies into a hell. Oh, the wild prayers 
for help that go up from a hundred thousand despairing 
slaves of strong drink to-day ! Oh, the shame, the dis- 
appointment, the fear, the disgust, the awful pity, the 
12* 



274 Every -Day Topics. 

mad protests that rise from a hundred thousand homes ! 
And still the smoke of the everlasting torment rises, and 
still we discuss the "wine question," and the "grape 
culture," and live on as if we had no share in the respon- 
sibility for so much sin and shame and suffering. 

Society bids us furnish wine at our feasts, and we fur- 
nish it just as generously as if we did not know that a 
certain percentage of all the men who drink it will die 
miserable drunkards, and inflict lives of pitiful suffering 
upon those who are closely associated with them. There 
are literally hundreds of thousands of people in polite life 
in America who would not dare to give a dinner or a 
party without wine, notwithstanding the fact that in 
many instances they can select the very guests who will 
drink too much on every occasion that gives them an 
opportunity. There are old men and women who invite 
young men to their feasts whom they know cannot drink 
the wine they propose to furnish without danger to them- 
selves and disgrace to their companions and friends. 
They do this sadly often, but under the compulsions of 
social usage. Now we understand the power of this in- 
fluence, and every sensitive man must feel it keenly. 
Wine has stood so long as an emblem and representa- 
tive of good cheer and generous hospitality, that it seems 
stingy to shut it away from our festivities and deny it to 
our guests. Then again it is so generally offered at the 
tables of our friends, and it is so difficult, apparently, 
for those who are accustomed to it to make a dinner 
without it, that we hesitate to offer water to them. It 
has a niggardly — almost an unfriendly — seeming ; yet 
what shall a man do who wishes to throw what influence 
he has on the side of temperance ? 

The question is not new. It has been up for an an- 
swer every year and every moment since men thought 
or talked about temperance at all. We know of but 



The Temperance Question. 275 

one answer to make to it. A man cannot, without stul- 
tifying and morally debasing himself, fight in public 
that which he tolerates in private. We have heard of 
such things as writing temperance addresses with a 
demijohn under the table, and society has learned by 
heart the old talk against drinking too much — "the 
excess of the thing, you know " — by those who have the 
power of drinking a little, but who would sooner part 
with their right eye than with that little. A man who 
talks temperance with a wine-glass in his hand is simply 
trying to brace himself so that he can hold it without 
shame. We do not deny that many men have self- 
control, or that they can drink wine through life without 
suffering to themselves or others. It may seem hard 
that they should be deprived of a comfort or a pleasure 
because others are less fortunate in their temperament 
or their power of will. But the question is whether a 
man is willing to sell his power to do good to a great 
multitude for a glass of wine at dinner. That is the 
question in its plainest terms. If he is, then he has 
very little benevolence, or a very inadequate apprehen- 
sion of the evils of intemperance. 

What we need in our metropolitan society is a decla- 
ration of independence. There are a great many good 
men and women in New York who lament the drinking 
habits of society most sincerely. Let these all declare 
that they will minister no longer at the social altars of 
the great destroyer. Let them declare that the indis- 
criminate offer of wine at dinners and social assemblies 
is not only criminal, but vulgar, as it undoubtedly is. 
Let them declare that for the sake of the young, the 
weak, the vicious — for the sake of personal character, 
and family peace, and social purity, and national strength 
— they will discard wine from their feasts from this time 
forth and forever, and the work will be done. Let them 



2"j6 Every -Day Topics. 

declare that it shall be vulgar — as it undeniably is — for 
a man to quarrel with his dinner because his host fails 
to furnish wine, This can be done now, and it needs to 
be done now,, for it is becoming every day more difficult 
to do it. The habit of wine-drinking at dinner is quite 
prevalent already. European travel is doing much to 
make it universal, and if we go on extending it at the 
present rate, we shall soon arrive at the European indif- 
ference to the whole subject. There are many clergy- 
men in New York who have wine upon their tables and 
who furnish it to their guests. We keep no man's con- 
science, but we are compelled to say that they sell influ- 
ence at a shamefully cheap rate. What can they do in 
the great fight with this tremendous evil ? They can do 
nothing, and are counted upon to do nothing. 

If the men and women of good society wish to have 
less drinking to excess, let them stop drinking moder- 
ately. If they are not willing to break off the indulgence 
of a feeble appetite for the sake of doing a great good to 
a great many people, how can they expect a poor, brok- 
en-down wretch to deny an appetite that is stronger than 
the love of wife and children, and even life itself? The 
punishment for the failure to do duty in this business is 
sickening to contemplate. The sacrifice of life and peace 
and wealth will go on. Every year young men will rush 
wildly to the devil, middle-aged men will booze away into 
apoplexy, and old men will swell up with the sweet poi- 
son and become disgusting idiots. What will become 
of the women ? We should think that they had suffered 
enough from this evil to hold it under everlasting ban, 
yet there are drunken women as well as drinking clergy- 
men. Society, however, has a great advantage in the 
fact that it is vulgar for a woman to drink. There are 
some things that a woman may not do, and maintain her 
social standing. Let her not quarrel with the fact that 



The Temperance Question. 277 

society demands more of her than it does of men. It is 
her safeguard in many ways. 

The Temperance Question and the Press. 

A very significant movement relating to the temper- 
ance question has been inaugurated in Massachusetts. 
Its special suggestiveness resides in the fact that it origi- 
nates with the friends of the Maine law, and is a tacit 
acknowledgment of the incompetency of that law to ful- 
fil the purpose for which it was designed. It is now 
determined to bring to the aid of that law the old tem- 
perance machinery, so long thrown into disuse by the 
expectation that the law would take its place, and per- 
fect the reform it had begun. We greet the restoration 
of this machinery as a good movement, but, while we 
give it our hearty approval, we cannot fail to remember 
that it was found incompetent of itself to achieve the re- 
sult at which it aimed. Whether it will succeed better 
as an auxiliary to the law, remains to be seen. That it 
will help somewhat we cannot doubt, but the truth is 
that all these spasmodic and semi-professional efforts at 
reform — these bands, and brotherhoods, and pledges, 
and organizations, and appeals — have proved themselves 
to be of very little permanent usefulness. After the peo- 
ple had been educated by them, or had been under their 
influence for many years, they relapsed fearfully the 
moment these means were dropped and it was under- 
taken to enforce a law whose efficiency would depend 
upon the public sentiment which they had developed. 
After those who had taken the reform into their hands 
had conscientiously and thoroughly worked their scheme 
for many years, they found, to their dismay, that not 
enough of temperance sentiment had been developed to 
sustain for a day, in efficient practical operation, the 



278 Every -Day Topics. 

law which was to render all further moral efforts un- 
necessary. 

In our judgment, we must have in this country some- 
thing more and better than Maine laws, and something 
more and better than temperance organizations and 
the stereotyped machinery of temperance movements. 
Neither this law nor this machinery, separately or in com- 
bination, has proved itself sufficient to effect the desired 
reform. We believe, however, that the reform is possible, 
that the agent to effect it exists, and that that agent has 
already a foothold in every intelligent house in the land. 
We have no question that the press of America, fully 
discharging its duty as a censor, enlightener, and educa- 
tor of the people, can do more to make the nation tem- 
perate in five years than all the temperance laws, lec- 
tures, and organizations have been able to effect in 
twenty-five years. Is it not true, to-day, that not one 
newspaper in twenty-five, the country through, manifests 
a positive interest in the temperance question and per- 
sistently casts its influence against the use of intoxicating 
drinks ? Is it not true that there is no question of public 
morals toward which the general American press is so 
uniformly indifferent and in regard to which it assumes 
so little responsibility as this ? 

There is a good reason for this fact somewhere — a 
sufficient one at least, or it would not exist. It is not 
because the editorial fraternity are without convictions 
on the subject, that they say nothing about it. It is not 
because they are tipplers themselves, or because they 
lack opportunity of acquaintance with the sad results of 
intemperance. It is mainly because they have consented 
to regard the question as practically taken out of their 
hands. Unless they have manifested entire willingness 
to become the organs and tools of the temperance organ- 
izations of the country — to say their words, push their 



The Temperance Question. 279 

schemes, and advocate their measures, without question 
or discrimination — those organizations have chosen to 
regard them as enemies of the temperance cause. It 
would be impossible for any set of men to manifest 
greater bigotry and intolerance toward all who have seen 
fit to differ with them on moral and legal measures than 
have characterized those zealous and thoroughly well- 
meaning reformers who, through various organizations, 
have assumed the custody and management of this ques- 
tion. Editors who have undertaken to discuss the ques- 
tion independently — as they are in the habit of discussing 
all public questions — have been snubbed and maligned 
until they have dropped it in disgust, and turned the whole 
matter over to those who have doubted or denounced 
them. Editors have not been alone in this surrender. 
It is notorious that more than one legislature, in more 
than one State, has passed laws for the suppression of 
intemperance that it had no faith in whatever, because 
the self-appointed champions of the temperance reform 
demanded them, and would have nothing else. It has 
not been safe for legislators to oppose the schemes of 
these men — safe for their reputation for sobriety. It 
has been assumed and declared that all men who were 
not with them, in whatever movement they chose to in- 
stitute, were friends of free rum and the upholders of 
vice and crime. So legislators have given them their 
own imperious way, and washed their hands of responsi- 
bility by the consideration that temperance men had 
"got what they wanted." 

The time for a new departure is come. It is punc- 
tuated by the shifting and uncertain movements of those 
who have " had their own way " for many years, and who 
find themselves as far from the goal at which they aimed 
as they were when they started. The press, indepen- 
dently, must take this question in hand, and educate the 



280 Every -Day lopics. 

people to temperance. The truth is that there is not a 
country on the face of the earth where stimulants are 
needed so little, and where they are capable of produc- 
ing so much mischief, as in our own. Our sparkling, 
sunny atmosphere, and the myriad incentives to hope 
and enterprise in our circumstances, are stimulants of 
God's own appointment for the American people. This 
pouring down of intoxicating liquors is ten thousand 
times worse than waste — it is essential sacrilege. This 
straining of the nerves, this heating of the blood, this 
stimulation or stupefaction of the mind, this imposition 
of cruel burdens upon the digestive organs, is a foul 
wrong upon Nature. Tens of thousands of valuable 
lives are sacrificed every year to this Moloch of strong 
drink. The crime, the beggary, the disgrace, the sor- 
row, the disappointment, the disaster, the sickness, the 
death that have flowed in one uninterrupted stream from 
the bottle and the barrel, throughout the length of the 
land, are enough to make all thinking and manly men 
curse their source and swear eternal enmity to it. The 
American people need to have it proved to them that un- 
der no circumstances are the various forms of intoxicating 
drink good for them. They are not yet convinced of this, 
although they know, of course, that the abuse of drink 
brings all the evils that can be imagined. Everyjuvenile 
periodical, every newspaper, every magazine, every re- 
view, owes it to the country to teach this fact persist- 
ently. There has been something in the way in which 
the temperance reform has been pursued which has 
brought upon it the stigma of fanaticism. That stigma 
ought to be obliterated — so thoroughly obliterated, that 
the man who weakly yields to a degrading appetite, or 
wantonly courts such an appetite, and the danger and 
disgrace it brings, shall feel that he bears a stigma which 
marks his degradation among a generation of clean and 



The Temperance Question. 281 

healthy men. In short, temperance must be made not 
only respectable, but fashionable. The wine-bibber and 
the beer-drinker, as well as those of stronger stomachs 
and coarser tastes, must be made to feel that they are 
socially disgraced by their habits. In the family, in the 
school, everywhere, by all the ordinary means of ap- 
proach to young and plastic minds, the virtue of temper- 
ance should be inculcated. It is fashionable for the 
young to drink wine to-day. It must not be to-morrow ; 
and in order that it may not be, the accepted leaders of 
public opinion must tell the people the truth, and enforce 
upon the people the obligations of duty. That world of 
high life which sends down its powerful influence upon 
all the life beneath it never was influenced by profes- 
sional temperance reformers or by temperance organiza- 
tions, and is not likely to be. The clergymen it listens 
to, the papers and magazines and books it reads, and 
the social authorities it respects, must inculcate temper- 
ance until it shall be a shame to place a wine-bottle be- 
fore a friend. 

O Heaven ! for one generation of clean and unpolluted 
men ! — men whose veins are not fed with fire ; men fit 
to be the companions of pure women ; men worthy to be 
the fathers of children ; men who do not stumble upon 
the rock of apoplexy at mid-age, or go blindly groping 
and' staggering down into a drunkard's grave, but who 
can sit and look upon the faces of their grandchildren 
with eyes undimmed and hearts uncankered. Such a 
generation as this is possible in America, and to pro- 
duce such a generation as this, the persistent, conscien- 
tious work of the public press is entirely competent as 
an instrumentality. The press can do what it will, and, 
if it will faithfully do its duty, Maine laws will come to 
be things unthought of, and temperance reformers and 
temperance organizations will become extinct. 



282 Every -Day Topics. 

Rum and Railroads. 

We hear a great deal in these days of the influence of 
railroad corporations in public affairs — of their power to 
control large bodies of men and shape the policy of 
States. That danger lies in this power, there is no ques- 
tion. In many States it has been the agent of enormous 
corruption, and in some it has lorded it over legislature, 
judiciary, and executive alike. With abounding means 
at its disposal, it has done more to corrupt the fountains 
of legislation than any other interest, and more than 
any other interest does it need the restraining and guid- 
ing hand of the law on behalf of the popular service and 
the popular virtue. 

There is one influence of railroads, however, that has 
not been publicly noticed, so far as we know, and to this 
we call attention. 

There is an influence proceeding from the highest man- 
aging man in a railroad corporation which reaches far- 
ther, for good or evil, than that of almost any other man 
in any community. If the president or the superintend- 
ent of a railroad is a man of free and easy social habits, 
if he is in the habit of taking his stimulating glass, and 
it is known that he does so, his railroad becomes a canal 
through which a stream of liquor flows from end to end. 
A rum-drinking head man, on any railroad, reproduces 
himself at every post on his line, as a rule. Grog-shops 
grow up around every station, and for twenty miles on 
both sides of the iron track, and often for a wider dis- 
tance, the people are corrupted in their habits and 
morals. The farmers who transport their produce to the 
points of shipment on the line, and bring from the de- 
pots their supplies, suffer as deeply as the servants of 
the corporations themselves. 

This is no imaginary evil. Every careful observer 



The Temperance Question. 283 

must have noticed how invariably the whole line of a 
railroad takes its moral hue from the leading man of the 
corporation. Wherever such a man is a free drinker, 
his men are free drinkers, and it is not in such men per- 
sistently to discountenance a vice that they persistently 
uphold by the practices of their daily life. A thorough 
temperance man at the head of a railroad corporation is 
a great purifier, and his road becomes the distributer 
of pure influences with every load of merchandise it bears 
through the country. There is just as wide a difference 
in the moral influence of railroads on the belts of coun- 
try through which they pass as there is among men, and 
that influence is determined almost entirely by the man- 
aging man. There are roads that pass through none but 
clean, well-ordered, and thrifty villages, and there are 
roads that, from one end to the other, give evidence, in 
every, town upon them, that the devil of strong drink 
rules and ruins. The character of ten thousand towns 
and villages in the United States is determined, in a 
greater or less degree, by the character of the men who 
control the railroads which pass through them. These 
men have so much influence, and, when they are bad 
men, are such a shield and cover for vice, wnich always 
keeps for them its best bed and its best bottle, that noth- 
ing seems competent to neutralize their power. 

The least that these corporations — to which the people 
have given such great privileges — can do, is to see that 
such men are placed in charge as will protect the people 
on their lines of road from degeneracy and ruin. To 
elect one man to a controlling place in a railway cor- 
poration whose social habits are bad, is deliberately, in 
the light of experience and of well-established facts, to 
place in every ticket-office and freight-office, and every 
position of service and trust on the line, a man who 
drinks ; to establish grog-shops near every station ; and 



284 Every -Day Topics. 

to carry a moral and industrial blight along the whole 
line of road whose affairs he administers. " Like master 
like man," and like man his companion and friend, 
wherever he finds him in social communion. 



Women and Wine. 

Woman has never been associated with wine without 
disgrace and disaster. The toast and the bacchanal 
that, with musical alliteration, couple these two words, 
spring from the hot lips of sensuality, and are burdened 
with shame. A man who can sing of wine and women 
in the same breath, is one whose presence is disgrace, 
and whose touch is pollution. A man who can forget 
mother and sister, or wife and daughter, and wantonly 
engage in a revel in which the name of woman is invoked 
to heighten the pleasures of the intoxicating cup, is, be- 
yond controversy and without mitigation, a beast. Let 
not the name by which we call the pure and precious ones 
at home be brought in to illuminate a degrading feast. 

Of the worst foes that woman has ever had to en- 
counter, wine stands at the head. The appetite for 
strong drink in man has spoiled the lives of more women 
— ruined more hopes for them, scattered more fortunes 
for them, brought to them more shame, sorrow, and 
hardship — than any other evil that lives. The country 
numbers tens of thousands — nay, hundreds of thousands 
— of women who are widows to-day, and sit in hopeless 
weeds, because their husbands have been slain by strong 
drink. There are hundreds of thousands of homes, 
scattered all over the land, in which women live lives 
of torture, going through all the changes of suffering 
that lie between the extremes of fear and despair, be- 
cause those whom they love, love wine better than they 
do the women whom they have sworn to love. There 



The Temperance Question. 285 

are women by thousands who dread to hear at the door 
the step that once thrilled them with pleasure, because 
that step has learned to reel under the influence of the 
seductive poison. There are women groaning with pain, 
while we write these words, from bruises and brutalities 
inflicted by husbands made mad by drink. There can 
be no exaggeration in any statement made in regard to 
this matter, because no human imagination can create 
anything worse than the truth, and no pen is capable of 
portraying the truth. The sorrows and the horrors of a 
wife with a drunken husband, or a mother with a drunken 
son, are as near the realization of hell as can be reached 
in this world, at least. The shame, the indignation, the 
sorrow, the sense of disgrace for herself and her chil- 
dren, the poverty — and not unfrequently the beggary — 
the fear and the fact of violence, the lingering, life-long 
struggle and despair of countless women with drunken 
husbands, are enough to make all women curse wine, 
and engage unitedly to oppose it everywhere as the worst 
enemy of their sex. 

And now what do we see on every New Year's Day ? 
Women all over the city of New York — women here and 
there all over the country, where like social customs 
prevail — setting out upon their tables the well-filled de- 
canters which, before night shall close down, will be 
emptied into the brains of young men and old men, who 
will go reeling to darker orgies, or to homes that will 
feel ashamed of them. Woman's lips will give the invi- 
tation, woman's hand will fill and present the glass, 
woman's careless voice will laugh at the effects of the 
mischievous draught upon their friends, and, having 
done all this, woman will retire to balmy rest, previously 
having reckoned the number of those to whom she has, 
during the day, presented a dangerous temptation, and 
rejoiced over it in the degree of its magnitude. 



286 Every -Day Topics. 

O woman ! woman ! Is it not about time that this 
thing was stopped ? Have you a husband, a brother, a 
son ? Are they stronger than their neighbors who have, 
one after another, dropped into the graves of drunkards ? 
Look around you, and see the desolations that drink has 
wrought among your acquaintances, and then decide 
whether you have a right to place temptation in any 
man's way, or do aught to make a social custom respect- 
able which leads hundreds of thousands of men into 
bondage and death. Why must the bottle come out 
everywhere ? Why can there not be a festal occasion 
without this vulgar guzzling of strong drink ? 

Woman, there are some things that you can do, and 
this is one : you can make drinking unpopular and dis- 
graceful among the young. You can utterly discounte- 
nance all drinking in your own house, and you can hold 
in suspicion every young man who touches the cup. You 
know that no young man who drinks can safely be 
trusted with the happiness of any woman, and that he is 
as unfit as a man can be for woman's society. Have this 
understood: that every young man who drinks is socially 
proscribed. Bring up your children to regard drinking 
as not only dangerous but disgraceful. Place temptation 
in no man's way. If men will make beasts of themselves, 
let them do it in other society than yours. If your mer- 
cenary husbands treat their customers from private 
stores kept in their counting-rooms, shame them into 
decency by your regard for the honor of your home. 
Recognize the living, terrible fact that wine has always 
been, and is to-day, the curse of your sex ; that it steals 
the hearts of men away from you, that it dries up your 
prosperity, that it endangers your safety, that it can only 
bring you evil. If social custom compels you to present 
wine at your feasts, rebel against it, and make a social 
custom in the interests of virtue and purity. The matter 



The Temperance Question. 287 

is very much in your own hands. The women of the 
country, in what is called polite society, can do more to 
make the nation temperate than all the legislators and 
tumultuous reformers that are struggling and blundering 
in their efforts to this end. 

Mitigating Circumstances. 

Among the various reasons assigned by those inter- 
ested in procuring the commutation of the sentence 
pronounced upon a convicted murderer in this city, 
for demanding the executive clemency, we did not see 
one which was really stronger than any other. It is 
strange that this was overlooked by both the parties 
opposing each other in this movement. In a reverend 
gentleman's letter to the Governor we find the state- 
ment that the murderer was drunk when he inflicted the 
fatal blow upon his victim. Granting that this was the 
case— for there is no doubt of it — the question arises as 
to the responsibility for this man's drunkenness. To a 
great and criminal extent the responsibility undoubtedly 
rested upon him, but has it occurred to this commu- 
nity, which so loudly calls for protection against mur- 
derous ruffianism, that it has consented to the existence 
of those conditions which all history has proved make 
murderous ruffianism certain ? There is no reasonable 
doubt that every murderer now confined in the Tombs 
committed his crime under the direct or indirect influ- 
ence of alcoholic drinks. Either under the immediate 
spur of the maddening poison, or through the brutality 
engendered by its habitual use, the murderous impulse 
was born. It is reasonably doubtful whether one of these 
criminals would have become a criminal if whiskey had 
been beyond his reach. Does any one doubt this ? Let 
him go to the cells and inquire. If the answer he gets 



288 Every- Day Topics. 

is different from what we suggest, then the cases he finds 
will be strangely exceptional. 

Now, who is to blame for establishing and maintaining 
all the conditions of danger to human life through mur- 
der ? Why, the very community that complains of the 
danger and calls for the execution of the murderers. 
So long as rum is sold at every street corner, with the 
license of the popular vote, men will drink themselves 
into brutality, and a percentage of those thus debasing 
themselves will commit murder. The sun is not more 
certain to rise in the morning than this event is to take 
place under these conditions. Fatal appetites are bred 
under this license. Diseased stomachs and brains are 
produced under it by the thousand. Wills are broken 
down, and become useless for all purposes of self-re- 
straint. And all this is done, let it be remembered, 
with the consent of the community, for a certain price 
in money, which the community appropriates as a reve- 
nue. Then, when this license produces its legitimate 
results — results that always attend such license, and 
could have been distinctly foreseen in the light of expe- 
rience — the community lifts its hands in holy horror, 
and clamors for the blood of the murderer in order to 
secure its own safety. It never thinks of drying up the 
fountain. It is easier to hang a man than shut up a 
grog-shop. It is easier to dry up a life than a revenue. 
It is easier to choke a prisoner than a politician. 

We are not pleading for any murderer's life ; we 
have signed no petition for any man's pardon ; but we 
have this to say : that so long as the sources of drunk- 
enness are kept open, the killing of a murderer will have 
very little effect in staying the hand of murder and se- 
curing the safety of human life. If this is what we are 
after in seeking the execution of the extreme penalty of 
the law, our object will not be reached. We have this 



The Temperance Question. 289 

further to say : that a community knowing that the traf- 
fic in alcoholic liquors is sure to produce murderers, and 
to render society unsafe, becomes virtually an accom- 
plice before the fact of murder, and therefore respon- 
sible for all the dangers to itself that lie in the murder- 
ous impulse. 

We declare, then, without any qualification, that the 
attitude of the community of the city of New York to- 
ward the liquor traffic is a mitigating circumstance in 
the case of nearly every murder committed in it. 
Further, it is a mitigating circumstance in the case of 
nearly every brutal assault, in every case of drunken- 
ness, and in half the other crimes that are committed. 
It is through the poverty and the shamelessness and 
immorality that come from drunkenness that our beg- 
gars and thieves are produced. If we could wipe out 
of existence all the crimes and woes of our city directly 
traceable to the almost unrestricted traffic in alcoholic 
stimulants to-day, the city would not know itself to- 
morrow. The surprise experienced by Mr. Squeers at 
finding himself so respectable would be more than 
matched by the surprise of a national metropolis at 
finding itself redeemed to virtue and personal safety. 

And now, what will the community do about it ? 
Nothing. The wine-bibbers among our first families 
will sip at the delicious beverage among themselves, 
feed it to their young men, and nurse them into mur- 
derers and debauchees, and vote for the license of a 
traffic on which they depend for their choicest luxuries. 
Goodish men will partake of it, for their stomach's sake 
and for their often infirmities. The Frenchman will 
destroy his bottle of Bordeaux every day ; the German 
will guzzle the lager that swells him into a tight-skinned, 
disgusting barrel ; and the whiskey-drinker, under the 
license that all these men claim for themselves, will poi- 
Vol. I.— 13 



290 Every-Day Topics. 

son himself, body and soul, and descend into a grave 
that kindly covers his shame, or into crime and pauper- 
ism that endanger the property and life of the city or 
sap its prosperity. In the meantime the ruffian or the 
murderer, acting under the influence of his maddening 
draughts, will maim and kill, and the very men who 
helped him to the conditions sure to develop the devil 
in him will clamor for his life. 



SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. 

Good Manners. 

MR. JAMES JACKSON JARVES, in a late number 
of The Independent, has an exceedingly interest- 
ing and well-written paper on " Fine Manners as a Fine 
Art." It is written from the standpoint of an artist, and 
relates mainly to the aesthetic element in manners. We 
do not propose to criticise it, and we allude to it only 
to point out and emphasize the distinction between good 
manners and fine manners. A manner may be fine with- 
out being good, and good without being fine. It may 
also be good and fine at the same time. The manner of 
an aristocrat, who looks down upon nine persons in ten 
whom he may happen to meet, may be fine, but it is 
not good. The manner of a Frenchman — a member of 
the Latin race, which Mr. Jarves praises — may be fine, 
but it is not good, because it is not based in that pro- 
found respect for woman without which all fine manners 
exhibited in his intercourse with her are no better than 
an insult. 

And this brings us to the only point we choose to 
make in this article. A catholic love of humanity, and 
a genuine respect for its rights, is the only sound basis 
for good manners. A tender and pure regard for 
woman, added to this among men, furnishes all the 
spring and impulse necessary for the best and finest 



292 Every -Day Topics, 

forms of politeness. It is not necessary to go to the 
Latin peoples, with their traditions of art and their aes- 
thetic culture ; it is not necessary to see countries where 
classes are recognized and manners take the form and 
are shaped to the arbitrary rules of etiquette ; it is not 
necessary to study manuals of social usage, or sit at the 
feet of Mr. Turveydrop, in order to learn good man- 
ners, provided a man thoroughly respect his fellow, and 
find himself possessed of that sentiment toward woman 
which makes her his ideal and his idol. Without this 
respect and this love, there is nothing more hollow and 
worthless than fine manners. They become, in this 
case, simply the disguise of an egoist more or less base 
and contemptible. 

We know that it is quite common to attribute fine 
manners to the Latin peoples as a characteristic. That 
their forms of politeness are graceful and picturesque is 
not to be denied. There is more of the show of courtesy 
among the common people, and more of what may be 
called gallantry in the treatment of women, than among 
the Saxons and the Celts ; but a form of courtesy which 
is a form of fawning for a purpose, and a gallantry 
which originates in sensuality, are neither fine manners 
nor good manners. The French have been for many 
years regarded as the politest nation of the earth. The 
French capital is looked upon as the very home and 
high court of fine manners, yet there is probably not a 
city in the world that entertains so little respect for wo- 
men as Paris, or that is so thoroughly permeated by dis- 
trust. The Frenchman does not trust the Frenchwoman, 
nor does she trust- him. His treatment of her, though 
fine enough in its manner, is dictated by that which is 
base in him. It has the look of gold, but both he and 
she know that it is only lacquer. France is full of fine 
manners, but we should never think of looking in France 



Social Intercourse. 293 

for good manners. Any man who has travelled there 
knows that they who bow lowest to him will cheat him 
worst, and that underneath a fine exterior and a show 
of self-depreciation and outgoing deference and respect, 
there lives and dominates a selfishness that is hideous 
and hateful. 

As we are in the habit of praising the Frenchman's 
politeness, so are we in the habit of speaking very con- 
temptuously of the manners of the characteristic Ameri- 
can. That in the lower forms of American social life 
there is much that is rude and uncouth is admitted, but 
it is also claimed that in some respects the American 
is the best-mannered man living. He is never quarrel- 
some, his whole education has made him careful to re- 
spect the rights of those around him, and he entertains 
a regard for woman which the characteristic represent- 
ative of no other nation shares with him. The theory 
on which the institutions of his country are founded, 
and the influence of those institutions upon him since 
the day of his birth, are favorable to the development in 
him of that respect for the rights of all men which is es- 
sential as the basis of good manners. In no country 
but America can a woman, unattended, travel whereso- 
ever she will without insult, or the danger of insult. 
There are no countries in the world in which a woman 
travelling alone would travel in so much danger as in 
those most noted for fine manners. 

American society is comparatively new. We have 
very little among us that is traditional. The national 
style of manners is in a formative state ; but we cer- 
tainly possess the basis for good manners in a pre-emi- 
nent degree. We are a good-natured, facile people, not 
ungraceful, and certainly not lacking in self-possession. 
We have need only to respect ourselves a little more, 
cease looking across the water for models, and give as 



294 Every-Day Topics. 

graceful an expression as we can to our sentiments to- 
ward universal man and woman, to become the acknowl- 
edged possessors of good manners. 

Fine manners will not become universal and character- 
istic of American life for many years. The absorption 
of the American mind in the development of the mate- 
rial resources of the country, in the prosecution of its 
industrial interests, and in the pursuit of wealth, forbids 
that aesthetic culture whose natural outgrowth is fine 
manners. Good manners, which we already possess, 
and for which we hold the only legitimate and reliable 
basis, need simply to be refined. The refinement of 
good manners will not come to us through the pursuit of 
" fine manners as a fine art," but they will come as a 
natural outgrowth of general aesthetic culture. As the 
nation becomes more refined, manners will be only one 
of the forms and modes through which the growing idea 
of that which is graceful and beautiful will express it- 
self. The man who feels finely will act finely, provided 
he mingle sufficiently in society to act freely. There is 
no value in any form of fine art without fine feeling, and 
there must be something better than the character of 
the typical Latin on which to base a style of manners 
worth possession or emulation. Manners pursued as an 
art, for their own sake, will become artificial, and thus 
react upon character in a very disagreeable and danger- 
ous way. 

Social Usages. 

There are some details of social usage that are so 
childish, and withal so inconvenient and burdensome, 
as to demand a public denunciation. Nobody likes 
them, everybody desires to be relieved of them, and all 
seem to be powerless to reform them. Their burden- 



Social Intercourse. 295 

someness forms a serious bar to social intercourse, and 
their only tendency is to drive some men and women out 
of society altogether, and to worry and weary those who 
remain subject to them. 

A person is invited to an " informal" reception. Spe- 
cial pains may be, and often are, taken to impress him 
with the idea that such a reception is, indeed, " in- 
formal." The idea is very good. The proposition is to 
bring together a circle of friends in a familiar way, with- 
out expensive dress on the part of the guests, or an ex- 
pensive entertainment on the part of the hostess. It is 
an attractive sort of invitation, but woe to the man or 
woman who accepts it according to its terms. The man 
and the woman who attend in anything but full evening 
dress will find themselves singular, and most uncom- 
fortable. They have taken their hostess at her word, 
and find, instead of a party of familiar friends, who can 
sit down and enjoy an hour of social intercourse, a 
highly dressed "jam," which comes late and departs 
late, and is treated to an elaborate supper. People 
have at last learned that if there is anything that must 
be dressed for elaborately, it is an " informal reception," 
and that there is really no greater cheat than the invita- 
tion which calls them together. The consequence is that 
we have no really informal gatherings of men and wo- 
men in what we call " society." 

Again, when we invite a guest to dinner at six, we ex- 
pect him to come at, or before, that hour. It is counted 
the height of impoliteness for a guest to keep a dinner 
waiting a moment. This is just as it should be; but 
when we invite a guest at eight o'clock, to a reception 
or a party, what then ? Why, we do not expect him 
until nine, we do not ordinarily get him until half-past 
nine, and are not surprised at his entrance at any sub- 
sequent hour before the company breaks up. Why the 



296 Every-Day Topics, 

rule should be good for the dinner that is not good for 
the assembly does not appear, except that in the case of 
the dinner it is a question of hot or cold soup that is to 
be decided. At eight the host and hostess are in their 
vacant rooms, be-gloved and waiting. They are there 
for an hour, wishing their guests would come. At last 
one makes his appearance, and, with a guilty look, whips 
upstairs. Then he waits until another joins him, and 
another, and another, and so at last he descends. All 
have lost the only opportunity they will have for a pleas- 
ant chat with those who have invited them — lost, indeed, 
the only chance they will have of a look at the flowers, 
at the pictures, and the enjoyment of an undisturbed 
chat, with comfortable seats and surroundings. All 
dread to be first, and so all wait, and thus thrust far 
into the night their hour of departure. The company 
that should be at home at eleven, and in bed at half- 
past eleven, do not find their beds until one the next 
morning. 

To the man of business such hours as mingling in so- 
cial life imposes are simply killing. They are the same to 
women who have family duties, to perform. They wipe 
the bloom of youth from the cheeks of girls in from one 
to three seasons ; and thus social life in the great cities, 
instead of being a blessing and a delight, as it should 
be, becomes a burden and a bore. Many are driven 
by considerations of health and comfort out of social 
life altogether, and those who remain rely upon the rest 
of summer to restore them sufficiently to stand another 
campaign. We submit that this is an unexaggerated 
representation of the present state of things, and pro- 
test that it demands reform. 

Every hour that a man spends out of his bed after 
half-past ten at night is a violence to nature. They 
have learned this in Germany, where in many towns 



Social Intercourse. 297 

their public amusements terminate at half-past nine, 
and in some cases even earlier than this. It is in this 
direction that a reform should be effected in America, 
so far as every variety of public and social assembly 
is concerned. An invitation at eight should mean what 
it says, and be honored in its terms. In this way social 
life would be possible to many to whom it is now prac- 
tically denied, and become a blessing to all. 

It is not hard to institute a reform of this kind. All 
it wants is a leading, and half a dozen of our social 
queens could do the work in a single season. It'used 
to be deemed essential to a social assembly that a huge, 
expensive supper be served at its close, and this at an 
hour when no man or woman could afford to eat a hearty 
meal. We have measurably outlived this in New York. 
It is " quite the thing" now to serve light and inexpen- 
sive refreshments. The man who dines at six needs no 
heavy supper before he goes to bed. He not only does 
not need it, but he cannot eat it without harm. Its ex- 
pensiveness is a constant bar to social life ; and let us 
be thankful that this abuse, at least, is pretty well re- 
formed already. Other abuses and bad habits can be 
reformed just as easily as this, because reform is in the 
line of the common sense and the common desire. The 
leading, as we have said, is all that is wanted, and when 
we commence another season such leading ought to be 
volunteered. Something surely ought to be done to 
make social life a recreative pleasure, and not a severe 
tax upon the vital forces, as it is at present. 

Social Taxes. 

The typical American is not an unsocial person. In- 
deed, he is very from being anything of the kind. For- 
eigners regard the American as one who has a particular 
13* 



298 Every -Day Topics. 

fondness for living with his windows up and his doors open. 
Yet it is doubtless true that there is a notable lack of 
freedom and ease in the intercourse of American society, 
and that the coming together of men and women for the 
interchange of thought and feeling is attended with diffi- 
culties that only the rich may successfully encounter. 
If half a dozen friends are invited to dinner, it is deemed 
necessary to crown the table with superfluous viands and 
dainty and costly dishes. If the same number are in- 
vited to tea, there is hardly less expense and trouble 
incurred. Instead of the simple tea, and the light food 
that appropriately accompanies it, in the ordinary life 
of the family, there is a supper, in which salads and 
solid dishes, cold and hot, and all expensive, are crowd- 
ed upon the jaded appetite. Even this is not enough. 
Before the guests depart, they are often beset again 
with dainty offerings of ice and fruit and coffee. 

When we come to more ambitious gatherings we en- 
counter more preposterous folly. An ordinary social 
party is a huge feast, which begins at the time when 
people ought to be going to bed, ends when they ought 
to be getting up, and crowds the stomach with luxurious 
and burdensome food and drinks at the time when it 
ought to be in its profoundest rest. One such party ex- 
hausts the resources of the family which gives it for a 
year or two, unless they are people of abounding wealth, 
turns their house upside down, and breaks up their 
whole family life icr a fortnight. The payment for en- 
tertainment, in music and dainties and flowers, makes 
the purse-carrier groan, and wrings from him the glad 
declaration that his duty is done for a twelvemonth at 
least ! One party is just like every other party, except 
that one is more or less expensive than another. There 
is rivalry of dress among the women, to be sure, and 
such new toilets as they can afford to make from time 



Social Intercourse. 299 

to time, and often such as they cannot afford to make ; 
but there are the same old fiddles, playing the same old 
quadrilles and waltzes ; there is the same caterer and 
the familiar ices and salads ; the same " How do you 
doV and the same " Good-night," and ''We have had 
such a splendid time ! " 

Now, we protest that there must be some better way 
than this. The great multitude are those who, in some 
calling or profession, work for their bread. To furnish 
a dinner and tea such as we have described would be 
felt by them as a severe tax. No matter how intellect- 
ual and socially valuable these people may be, they 
shrink from entering society that imposes such burdens. 
As they feel it to be impossible for them to return in 
kind the expensive civilities which a wealthy neighbor 
extends to them, they shrink back into their own houses 
and go nowhere. Everywhere, and all the time, these 
costly entertainments, at dinner and tea and social as- 
sembly, operate as a bar to social intercourse. In- 
deed, they have become, in the full, legitimate meaning 
of the word, a nuisance. To those who give them they 
are not pleasant in any respect. They are provided 
with no expectation of a compensating pleasure, and 
few besides the young — to whom any opportunity for 
dancing and frolicking is agreeable — take the slightest 
satisfaction in them. They are glad when their toilet is 
made, glad when the refreshments are offered, glad 
when the show is over and they can go home, glad when 
they get safely to bed, and particularly glad the follow- 
ing morning if they can look over their coats and dresses 
and find that they are not ruined. 

Have we exaggerated in the least in these representa- 
tions ? Nay, have we not told the exact, notorious 
truth? We protest again, then, that there must be 
some better way. Here is another opportunity for wo- 



300 Every-Day Topics, 

man to do good ; for it is woman, in her social pride and 
in her pride of housekeeping, who has more to do with 
this thing than man. The woman who can make her 
drawing-room attractive by informal gatherings of men 
and women, who shall not be put through the tortures 
of the toilet, nor burdened with a sense of obligation 
by the luxuries prepared for their entertainment, is the 
real social queen. The essential vulgarity of the phase 
of social life which we are considering is decided by the 
simple fact that the great question of the hostess con- 
cerns the stomachs of her guests, and the great question 
of her guests relates to the decoration of their own backs. 
It elevates nobody, it refines nobody, it inspires and 
instructs nobody, and it satisfies nobody. Yet we go 
on, year after year, upholding these social usages which 
we despise. Let us find the better way, and follow it ! 

The Tortures of the Dinner-Table. 

In the space of twenty-five years we have heard twen- 
ty-five men, more or less, make successful dinner-table 
speeches. Of these, ten were sensible men who enter- 
tained their companions by trying to talk like fools ; 
ten were fools who were equally entertaining in their 
endeavor to talk like sensible men ; and five — the only- 
persons of the number who enjoyed the eminence and 
the exercise — were drunk, and neither knew nor cared 
whether they talked sense or nonsense. As a rule, the 
successful dinner-table orator is a shallow man — one 
whose thoughts are on the surface, whose vocabulary is 
small and at quick command, and whose lack of any 
earnest purpose in life leaves him free to talk upon 
trifles. We all remember what earnest, strong, logical 
speeches Abraham Lincoln used to make, when he 
stood before the people in the advocacy of great princi- 



Social Intercourse. 301 

pies and a great cause ; and we remember too, with 
pain, how tame and childish and awkward he was when 
he appeared before them to acknowledge a compliment, 
or to say something which should be nothing. Inspired 
by a great purpose, he could do anything ; with nothing 
to say, he could say nothing. It is thus with the great 
majority of our best men. There is nothing in which 
they succeed so poorly as in a dinner-table speech, and 
there is nothing which they dread so much. The anticipa- 
tion of it is torture to them ; the performance is usually 
a failure. At last they learn to shun dinner-tables, and 
to tell weak lies in apology for their non-attendance. 

There is something very absurd in the submission of 
so many men to this custom of speech-making. There 
is never a public dinner, or a dinner which may possi- 
bly merge into formality of toast and talk, without its 
overhanging cloud of dread. There is probably not one 
man present, from him who expects to be called upon 
for a speech to him who is afraid that the demand will 
at last reach him, who would not pay a handsome price 
to be out of the room and its dangers. To multitudes 
of men the viands of a feast are gall and bitterness, 
through this haunting dread of the moment when, with 
bellies full and brains empty, they shall find themselves 
on their feet, making a frantic endeavor to say some- 
thing that shall bring down the fork-handles, and give 
them leave to subside. 

Why a dinner-table should be chosen as an oratorical 
theatre, we cannot imagine. There could not be se- 
lected a moment more inauspicious for happy speech 
than that in which all the nervous energy centres itself 
upon digestion. A man cannot have even a happy 
dream under such circumstances. Dancing the sailor's 
hornpipe with dumb-bells in one's coat pockets is not 
advisable, and it is possible that it is not advisable 



302 Every-Day Topics. 

under any circumstances. It is very rare that a dinner- 
party prefers to sit and listen to interminable speeches, 
for it is almost as hard to listen as to talk when the 
stomach is full of the heavy food of a feast. Nothing 
but stimulating drink loosens the tongue under such 
circumstances, or puts a company into that sensitively 
appreciative mood which responds to buncombe and 
bathos. The drinking which is resorted to for making 
these occasions endurable is often shameful, and always 
demoralizing. Not a good thing ever comes of it all, no- 
body enjoys it, speakers and hearers dislike it, and still 
the custom is continued. It is like the grand dress par- 
ties, which nobody likes, yet which all attend and all give, 
to the infinite boring of themselves and their friends. 

The discourtesies often visited upon gentlemen at 
public dinner-parties deserve an earnest protest. Men 
are called to their feet not only against their known 
wishes, but against pledges, and compelled to speech 
that is absolute torture to them. The boobies who thus 
distress modest and sensitive men ought to be kicked 
out of society. No one has a right to give an innocent 
man pain by compelling him to make of himself a pub- 
lic spectacle, or summoning him to a task that is un- 
speakably distasteful to him. No man ought ever to be 
called upon at such a place, except with his full consent 
previously obtained, and he who forces a modest man 
to a task like this in the presence of society, fails in the 
courtesy of a gentleman. The truth is that no dinner is 
pleasant unless it be entirely informal. The moment it 
takes on a formal character its life as a social occasion 
is departed ; and those who foster the custom of speech- 
making drive from their society multitudes of men who 
would be glad to meet them — whose presence would 
give them pleasure and do them good. Let us have 
done with this foolishness. 



TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

The Loneliness of Farming Life in America. 

AN American traveller in the Old World notices, 
among the multitude of things that are new to his 
eye, the gathering of agricultural populations into vil- 
lages. He has been accustomed in his own country to 
see them distributed upon the farms they cultivate. 
The isolated farm-life, so universal here, either does 
not exist at all in the greater part of continental Europe, 
or it exists as a comparatively modern institution. The 
old populations, of all callings and professions, clustered 
together for self-defence, and built walls around them- 
selves. Out from these walls, for miles around, went the 
tillers of the soil in the morning, and back into the gates 
they thronged at night. Cottages were clustered around 
feudal castles, and grew into towns ; and so Europe for 
many centuries was cultivated mainly by people who 
lived in villages and cities, many of which were walled, 
and all of which possessed appointments of defence. 
The early settlers in our own country took the same 
means to defend themselves from the treacherous In- 
dian. The towns of Hadley, Hatfield, Northfield, and 
Deerfield, on the Connecticut River, are notable exam- 
ples of this kind of building, and to this day they re- 
main villages of agriculturists. That this is the way in 



304 Every -Day Topics, 

which farmers ought to live we have no question, and 
we wish to say a few words about it. 

There is some reason for the general disposition of 
American men and women to shun agricultural pursuits 
which the observers and philosophers have been slow to 
find. We see young men pushing everywhere into trade, 
into mechanical pursuits, into the learned professions, 
into insignificant clerkships, into salaried positions of 
every sort that will take them into towns and support 
and hold them there. We find it impossible to drive 
poor people from the cities with the threat of starvation, 
or to coax them with the promise of better pay and 
cheaper fare. There they stay, and starve, and sicken, 
and sink. Young women resort to the shops and the 
factories rather than take service in farmers' houses, 
where they are received as members of the family ; and 
when they marry, they seek an alliance, when practica- 
ble, with mechanics and tradesmen who live in villages 
and large towns. The daughters of the farmer fly the 
farm at the first opportunity. The towns grow larger all 
the time, and, in New England at least, the farms are 
becoming wider and longer, and the farming population 
are diminished in numbers and in some localities de- 
graded in quality and character. 

It all comes to this, that isolated life has very little 
significance to a social being. The social life of the vil- 
lage and the city has intense fascination to the lonely 
dwellers on the farm, or to a great multitude of them. 
Especially is this the case with the young. The youth 
of both sexes who have seen nothing of the world have 
an overwhelming desire to meet life and to be among the 
multitude. They feel their life to be narrow in its op- 
portunities and its rewards, and the pulsation of the great 
social heart that comes to them in rushing trains and 
passing steamers and daily newspapers, damp with the 



Town and Country. 305 

dews of a hundred brows, thrills them with longings for 
the places where the rhythmic throb is felt and heard. 
They are not to be blamed for this. It is the most natu- 
ral thing in the world. If all of life were labor — if the 
great object of life were the scraping together of a few 
dollars, more or less — why, isolation without diversion 
would be economy and profit ; but so long as the object 
of life is life, and the best and purest and happiest that 
can come of it, all needless isolation is a crime against 
the soul, in that it is a surrender and sacrifice of noble 
opportunities. 

We are, therefore, not sorry to see farms growing 
larger, provided those who work them will get nearer 
together ; and that is what they ought to do. Any farm- 
er who plants himself and his family alone — far from 
possible neighbors — takes upon himself a terrible respon- 
sibility. It is impossible that he and his should be well 
developed and thoroughly happy there. He will be for- 
saken in his old age by the very children for whom he 
has made his great sacrifice. They will fly to the towns 
for the social food and stimulus for which they have 
starved. We never hear of a colony settling on a west- 
ern prairie without a thrill of pleasure. It is in colonies 
that all ought to settle, and in villages rather than on 
separated farms. The meeting, the lecture, the public 
amusement, the social assembly, should be things easily 
reached. There is no such damper upon free social life 
as distance. A long road is the surest bar to neighborly 
intercourse. If the social life of the farmer were richer, 
his life would by that measure be the more attractive. 

After all, there are farmers who will read this article 
with a sense of affront or injury, as if by doubting or dis- 
puting the sufficiency of their social opportunities we in- 
sult them with a sort of contempt. We assure them that 
they cannot afford to treat thoroughly sympathetic coun- 



306 Every-Day Topics. 

sel in this way. We know that their wives and daughters 
and sons are on our side, quarrel with us as they may ; 
and the women and children are right. " The old man," 
who rides to market and the post-office, and mingles 
more or less in business with the world, gets along toler- 
ably well, but it is the stayers at home who suffer. In- 
stead of growing wiser and better as they grow old, they 
lose all the graces of life in unmeaning drudgery, and 
instead of ripening in mind and heart, they simply dry 
up or decay. We are entirely satisfied that the great 
curse of farming life in America is its isolation. It is 
useless to say that men shun the farm because they are 
lazy. The American is not a lazy man anywhere ; but 
he is social, and he will fly from a life that is not social 
to one that is. If we are to have a larger and better 
population devoted to agriculture, isolation must be 
shunned, and the whole policy of settlement hereafter 
must be controlled or greatly modified by social consid- 
erations. 

The Overcrowded Cities. 

There is hardly a city in the United States which does 
not contain more people than can get a fair, honest liv- 
ing, by labor or trade, in the best times. When times 
of business depression come, like those through which 
we have passed and are passing, there is a large class 
that must be helped, to keep them from cruel suffering. 
Still the cities grow, while whole regions of the country — 
especially its older portions— are depopulated year by 
year. Yet the fact is patent to-day that the only pros- 
perous class is the agricultural. We often witness the 
anomaly of thrifty farmers and starving tradesmen. The 
country must be fed, and the farmers feed it. The city 
family may do without new clothes, and a thousand 



Town and Country. 307 

luxurious appliances, but it must have bread and meat. 
There is nothing that can prevent the steady prosperity 
of the American farmer but the combinations and "cor- 
ners " of middle-men, that force unnatural conditions 
upon the finances and markets of the country. 

This is not the first occasion we have had for allusion 
to this subject, and it is not likely to be the last. The 
forsaking of the farm for city life is one of the great evils 
of the time, and, so far, it has received no appreciable 
check. Every young man, apparently, who thinks he 
can get a living in the city, or at the minor centres of 
population, quits his lonely home upon the farm and 
joins the multitude. Once in the city, he never returns. 
Notwithstanding the confinement and the straitened con- 
ditions of his new life, he clings to it until he dies, add- 
ing his family to the permanent population of his new 
home. Mr. Greeley, in his days of active philanthropy, 
used to urge men to leave the city — to go West — to join 
the agricultural population, and thus make themselves 
sure of a competent livelihood. He might as well have 
talked to the wind. A city population can neither be 
coaxed nor driven into agricultural pursuits. It is not 
that they are afraid of work. The average worker of the 
city toils more hours than the average farmer in any 
quarter of the country. He is neither fed nor lodged as 
well as the farmer. He is less independent than the 
farmer. He is a bond-slave to his employers and his 
conditions ; yet the agricultural life has no charms for 
him. 

Whatever the reason for this may be, it is not based 
in the nature of the work, or in its material rewards. The 
farmer is demonstrably better off than the worker of the 
city. He is more independent, has more command of 
his own time, fares better at table, lodges better, and 
gets a better return for his labor. What is the reason, 



308 Every-Day Topics. 

then, that the farmer's boy runs to the city the first 
chance he can get, and remains, if he can possibly find 
there the means of life ? 

It can only be found, we believe, in the social lean- 
ness, or social starvation, of American agricultural life. 
The American farmer, in all his planning and all his 
building, has never made provision for life. He has only 
considered the means of getting a living. Everything 
outside of this — everything relating to society and cul- 
ture — has been steadily ignored. He gives his children 
the advantages of schools, not recognizing the fact that 
these very advantages call into life a new set of social 
wants. A bright, well-educated family, in a lonely farm- 
house, is very different material from a family brought 
up in ignorance. An American farmer's children, who 
have had a few terms at a neighboring academy, resem- 
ble in no degree the children of the European peasant. 
They come home with new ideas and new wants, and if 
there is no provision made for these new wants, and 
they find no opportunities for their satisfaction, they 
will be ready, on reaching their majority, to fly the farm 
and seek the city. 

If the American farmer wishes to keep his children 
near him, he must learn the difference between living 
and getting a living ; and we mistake him and his grade 
of culture altogether if he does not stop over this state- 
ment and wonder what we mean by it. To get a living, 
to make money, to become "forehanded" — this is the 
whole of life to agricultural multitudes, discouraging in 
their numbers to contemplate. To them there is no dif- 
ference between living and getting a living. Their whole 
life consists in getting a living, and when their families 
come back to them from their schooling, and find that, 
really, this is the only pursuit that has any recognition 
under the paternal roof, they must go away. The boys 



Town and Country. 309 

push to the centres or the cities, and the girls follow 
them if they can. A young man or a young woman, 
raised to the point where they apprehend the difference 
between living and getting a living, can never be satis- 
fied with the latter alone. Either the farmer's children 
must be kept ignorant, or provision must be made for 
their social wants. Brains and hearts need food and 
clothing as well as bodies, and those who have learned 
to recognize brains and hearts as the best and most im- 
portant part of their personal possessions, will go where 
they can find the ministry they need. 

What is the remedy ? How shall farmers manage to 
keep their children near them ? How can we discourage 
the influx of unnecessary — nay, burdensome — popula- 
tions into the cities ? We answer : By making agricultural 
society attractive. Fill the farm-houses with periodicals 
and books. Establish central reading-rooms, or neigh- 
borhood clubs. Encourage the social meetings of the 
young. Have concerts, lectures, amateur dramatic as- 
sociations. Establish a bright, active, social life, that 
shall give some significance to labor. Above all, build, 
as far as possible, in villages. It is better to go a mile 
to one's daily labor than to place one's self a mile away 
from a neighbor. The isolation of American farm-life 
is the great curse of that life, and it falls upon the wo- 
men with a hardship that the men cannot appreciate, 
and drives the educated young away. 



THE RICH AND THE POOR. 

Employers and Employed. 

'"PHE relations of employer and employed have existed 
-*- since civilization began. Nothing has been done 
without capital ; nothing has been done without labor. 
To realize what is regarded as the ideal condition, asso- 
ciations of laborers with capital have been organized — 
co-proprietary and co-operative — with varying results. 
After all attempts of this kind, the fact seems well es- 
tablished that industrial unions and partnerships will 
never become the rule, and that labor and capital will 
respectively be at the disposal of different men. Those 
who have' labor to sell, without money to invest in the 
materials and products of their own industry, will al- 
ways be a large proportion of the community. If the 
capital of the world were to be equally divided to-day, 
it would not take a month to re-establish the old division 
of capitalists and laborers. There are organizing, di- 
recting, controlling minds, which would manage at once 
to win capital, and employ the industry of others, and 
even the accidents of life would make many poor men 
rich. There is no possibility of maintaining equality of 
condition among men. The capitalist, with money to 
be employed in commerce, agriculture and manufac- 
tures, and the laborer, with various industry and skill 
to sell, will live side by side while the world stands. The 



The Rich and the Poor. 311 

natural wish of the first will always be to get the best 
profit he can on his money, and of the other to get the 
best price he can for his labor. 

The great practical question with both classes con- 
cerns the relations that exist between them. Shall those 
relations be friendly and harmonious, or discordant and 
inimical ? Is there any real ground for opposition and 
jealousy? The strikes of laborers, the formation of trades- 
unions, the speeches uttered and the editorials published 
on the tyranny of capital, show that at least a portion of 
the laboring community consider themselves aggrieved 
by those who employ them. To some extent this is un- 
doubtedly true. There are men who would make their 
laborers their slaves, and who would gladly obtain their 
labor at the lowest price compatible with the mainte- 
nance of their laboring power. There are corporations 
without souls, which have no more consideration for the 
muscles and the skill that they employ in their mills 
and shops than they have for the horses employed out- 
side. It is entirely natural for labor to organize against 
such men and such corporations, and to look upon them 
as enemies. Where personal rights are unrecognized, 
where capital refuses to see in the laborer anything but 
its dependent and servant, where oppressions are prac- 
tised, there will and must be rebellion. The man or 
the corporation whose supreme object is to get the most 
out of the laborer for the least consideration in money, 
will be sure to have laborers who will aim to get the 
most money possible for the smallest consideration in 
labor. Laborers will do this independently or in com- 
bination, and their action will be entirely justifiable, 
though it may not always be wise. 

The iniquity of trades-unions is that they make no dis- 
tinction between good and bad employers, and breed 
universal discontent and demoralization. Even in this 



312 Every-Day Topics. 

day of wide and deep distress among capitalists — this 
day of shrunken values and business stagnation — when, 
but for the sake of the poor, capital would greatly prefer 
to lie idle, there are bands of men who quarrel with their 
wages, and feel that they are badly used. 

Now, we believe that the majority of employers intend 
to do full justice to those whom they employ. We be- 
lieve that in this day of trial and loss, there are men who 
are doing more than they can afford to do, in order to 
keep their laborers from distress. At this time, as at all 
times, they are the subjects of the inexorable law of 
demand and supply, and so, with a great supply and no 
demand, they stagger feebly along with their business, 
that those dependent on them may be fed. They are 
men who recognize the interdependence of labor and 
capital, and are willing to share the trials of the time 
with those who minister to their prosperity in better 
days. 

Now labor stultifies itself and makes itself an object 
of contempt when it fails to recognize and reward a just 
and generous disposition on the part of capital. A 
laborer who will join a band of fellow-craftsmen in the 
attempt to extort an increase of wages from an employer 
who uses him well in adversity and fairly in prosperity, 
surrenders his manhood, either to his own selfishness or 
to the despotism of his fellows. We hope strikes have 
done good. It would be a pity that the amount of suf- 
fering they have caused should have been of no avail. 
If they have checked any tendency to oppression on the 
part of capital, if they have taught the holder of money 
not to claim too much of the profits of industry, we are 
glad. But we are sure there is a better way, and that 
now is a good time to enter upon it. It is a good time 
for capitalists to ask themselves the question whether 
they have always recognized the jights of labor, and 



The Rich and the Poor. 313 

given it an appropriate reward — whether they have ever 
tried to win the heart of labor — whether they have given 
it brotherhood and endeavored to minister to its com- 
fort, happiness and elevation. It is a good time, too, 
for the laborer to ask himself the question whether he 
has always sufficiently considered the fact that capital 
runs all the risk, while he runs none * that it is liable to 
be destroyed by flame, or dissipated in financial dis- 
aster ; and that his ability to feed and clothe his wife 
and little ones depends upon the prosperity of capital. It 
is a good time, too, for him to remember that capital 
bears the great burdens of society, that it pays the enor- 
mous taxes of the time, that it supports all the charities, 
and that, whether there is labor for the laborer or not, 
the laborer is fed. It is a good time for him to remem- 
ber that in the last resort of necessity, capital does not 
permit him or his children to go houseless and without 
bread. 

In short, it is a good time, in their common trouble, 
for the capitalist and the laborer to learn that they are 
brethren, and dependent in many ways upon one an- 
other. When this period of depression passes away, as 
it must soon — for the world moves on — it is quite pos- 
sible that work will be recommenced upon a more 
modest basis of wages on one side and profits on the 
other. We hope, then, that employers and employed 
will lay aside all the old jealousies and resentments, and 
learn to be not only just but generous toward each other. 
There are communities in America blessed by capital- 
ists who share in many ways with their laborers the fruit 
of their prosperity. Public halls, reading-rooms, libra- 
ries, comfortable houses and the best schools, bestowed 
by employers, have made some manufacturing villages a 
collection of intelligent and happy homes, and even 
labor itself a choice privilege. There is nothing that the 
Vol. I.— 14 



3 14 Every -Day Topics. 

laborer wants so much as recognition as a man, and a 
chance for his family. When the employer has the 
power to give both and gives both, he ought not to be 
troubled with strikes or jealousies, or the inefficiency of 
those who do his work. 



The Neglect of the Rich. 

If any of the millionaires of the City of New York 
have felt grieved because we have not called upon them, 
or because we do not even know their faces when we 
happen to meet them, we beg their pardon. We have 
had no intention to slight them, or to count them out of 
the circle of humanity by reason of their comparative 
independence of it. We do not blame them for being 
rich, unless they have procured their wealth by oppres- 
sion of the poor. Some of them have become rich be- 
cause they were brighter and more industrious than the 
rest of us, and recognized quicker than we the elusive 
faces of golden opportunities. We can find no fault with 
them for this, but rather with ourselves. Some of them 
inherited wealth, and have no responsibilities concern- 
ing it save those connected with the spending of it. 
Some of them acquired it by accident — by the rise of 
real estate that they had held, perhaps, unwillingly, or 
by an unlooked-for appreciation of the value of stocks. 
However their wealth may have been acquired — always 
excepting that which has been won by immoral prac- 
tices — we wish to have them understand that we think 
none the worse of them for their pleasant fortune. We 
regard them still as men and brothers, who delight in 
the sympathy of their fellows, and whose hearts are 
warmed by the popular confidence and good-will. 

We confess that we have never been quite able to 
understand why it is that those who have been fortunate 



The Rich and the Poor. 315 

in life should be compelled, in consequence, to sacrifice 
their early friendships and their old friends. Two boys 
begin life together. They may or may not be relatives, 
but they are bosom friends. They confide to one another 
their plans and ambitions, and start out on the race for 
fortune, neck-and-neck. One outstrips the other, and 
reaches his goal gladly and gratefully. He has thrown 
no hinderances in the path of his friend. He has, on the 
contrary, encouraged him, and, so far as it was proper 
for him to do so, given him assistance. Finding at last 
that he is hopelessly floundering in the way, or that he 
has tripped and fallen, he goes back to him to exchange 
a friendly word, but he is met by cold looks and averted 
eyes. The successful man has committed no sin except 
that of becoming successful. He has lost none of his 
affection for his friend, but he has lost his friend. 
Thenceforward there is between the two a great gulf 
fixed, and that gulf is fixed by the unsuccessful man. 
He has taken to himself the fancy that the successful 
man must hold the unsuccessful man in dishonor, and 
that he cannot possibly meet him again on the even 
terms which existed when their lives were untried plans. 
There are few successful men, we imagine, who have 
not been vexed and wounded by the persistent mis- 
apprehensions and distrust of those whom they loved 
when they were young, and whom they would still gladly 
love if they could be permitted to do so. There is not 
an hour, on any day, in this city, in which thriving men 
do not cross the street to meet old friends who, because 
they are not thriving, strive to avoid them— not an hour 
in which they do not try by acts of courtesy and hearty 
good-will to hold the friendship of those whom they have 
left behind in the strife for fortune. Excepting a few 
churls and coxcombs, they all do this until they get 
thoroughly tired of it, and finally give it up as a bad 



316 Every -Day Topics, 

job. They know that they have done their duty. They 
know that they have not entertained a thought or per- 
formed an act of wrong toward those who shun them. 
Their consciences are clear, and at last — half in sor- 
row, half in anger — they consent that the knot that once 
united two harmonious lives shall be severed forever. 

There are many men who cannot bear prosperity 
when it comes to them, but their number is small com- 
pared to those who cannot bear the prosperity of others. 
There is no finer test of true nobility of character than 
that furnished by the effect of the good fortune of 
friends. The poor man who rejoices in the prosperity 
of his neighbor, and meets him always without distrust 
and with unshaken self-respect, betrays unconsciously 
a nature and character which a king might envy. To 
such a man every rich man bows with cordial recogni- 
tion, while he cannot fail to regard with contempt the 
insolent churl who meets him with bravado and the of- 
fensive assertion of an equality which he does not feel, 
as well as the cowardly sneak who avoids and distrusts 
him. 

A great deal is said about the insolence of riches and 
the neglect or disregard of the poor on the part of those 
who possess them; but, in sober truth, there is a neglect 
of the rich on the part of the poor that is quite as unjust 
and quite as hard to bear. If there is a gulf between 
the rich man and the poor man, the latter does quite as 
much to dig it and keep it open as the former. There 
are multitudes of rich men whose wealth has the ten- 
dency to enlarge their sympathies and to fill them with 
good- will, particularly toward all those whom they have 
known in their less prosperous years. To these men of 
generous natures the loss of sympathy and friendship is 
a grievous deprivation. 

Money does not make the man. The poor man will 



The Rich a?id the Poor. 317 

tell us this as if he believed it, but either he does not 
believe it or he believes that the rich man does not be- 
lieve it ; certainly in his intercourse with the rich man 
he does not manifest his faith in this universally ac- 
cepted maxim. He merely accepts the rich man's cour- 
tesies as condescension and patronage, and is offended 
by them. No ; let no poor man talk of the pride and 
superciliousness of riches until his self-respectful poverty 
is ready to meet those riches half way, and to have faith 
in the good-will and common human sympathy of those 
who bear them. 

Strike, but Hear. 

We suppose that there is nothing simpler than simple 
addition, excepting, perhaps, those people who have no 
talent for it, of whom, unfortunately, there is a consider- 
able number, especially among the striking craftsmen. 
If it were to be announced to-day that ten dollars will 
hereafter be the average price of a day's labor among 
all the trades, we do not doubt that it would be regarded 
by the toiling multitudes as the gladdest and grandest 
event that had ever occurred in the history of the na- 
tional industry. Let us see, then, if we can, what the 
effect of such an advance in the price of labor would be. 
This is a rich country, and every rich country has a 
multitude of artificial wants. To supply these wants, 
there have been organized a large number of productive 
industries, and hundreds of thousands of laborers are 
fed by them. The first effect of a doubling of the price 
of labor would be to destroy all those industries which 
are engaged in producing things that men and women 
can do without. When the price of the necessaries of 
life is raised, the use of luxuries is reduced in a corre- 
sponding degree. This law is just as unvarying in its 



3 1 8 Every -Day Topics. 

operation as the law of gravitation. A man who spends 
$10,000 a year, giving $2,000 of it to luxuries, drops his 
luxuries, and spends his $10,000 on a smaller number 
of people. He dismisses a servant, and gives up his 
carriage. He stops buying flowers and giving enter- 
tainments. Every man and woman who had anything 
to do in feeding his artificial wants loses his patronage, 
and thus whole classes of people would, by such an ad- 
vance in the price of labor, be thrown out of employ- 
ment and into distress. This, however, would be only 
an indirect or incidental damage to the laboring inter- 
est, though it would be a damage to that interest alone. 
The rich would really suffer very little by it. 

There are certain things that we must all have— the 
rich and the poor alike — houses to live in, clothes to 
wear, and bread and meat to eat. What effect would 
such a change have upon these? A house that cost 
$3,000 to build yesterday, will cost $6,000 to-morrow. 
The brickmaker, the stone-cutter, the mason, the car- 
penter, all working at double wages, would, by that very 
fact, advance the price of their own rent in a corre- 
sponding degree. The tenement that rents for $250 to- 
day will rent for $500 to-morrow, and if it cannot be 
rented for that sum, it will not be built at all. The 
same thing will be true concerning what are called the 
necessaries of life. If it costs twice as much money to 
produce a barrel of flour to-day as it did yesterday, it 
will double in price. Every article of produce, every 
garment that we buy for ourselves or our children, will 
have added to its price exactly what has been added to 
the cost of its production or manufacture, and when 
this excess has been added to the excess of rent, the 
laborer will find himself at the end of his first year no 
whit benefited by what seemed to hold the promise of a 
fortune. We cannot imagine a man with common sense 



The Rich and the Poor. 319 

enough to labor intelligently who will be unable to see 
at a glance that our conclusions on this point are inevi- 
table. 

Now, there is beyond this direct result of a doubling 
of the price of labor an indirect effect upon the price of 
real estate, which greatly enhances the trouble of the 
laborer. The destruction of various branches of indus- 
try, and the rendering of other branches either precari- 
ous or insufficient in their profits, would inevitably con- 
centrate capital, so far as possible, upon real estate. 
Idle or poorly employed capital is always seeking for 
an investment, and if banking and manufacturing and 
trade become unprofitable, through a disturbance of 
just relations between labor and capital, the man who 
has money puts it into real estate. Under this stimulus 
real estate rises at once. If the price of labor were 
doubled, the advance in rents from this cause alone 
would not only be appreciable, but decidedly onerous. 
The inevitable tendency of every strike is to drive capi- 
tal out of manufacturing into real estate, to raise the 
price of real estate, and to raise the laborer's rent. 

We have supposed this extreme case in order to show 
the laborer, as we could do in no other way, the ten- 
dency of his measures to secure large wages by arbi- 
trary means. That there is a point beyond which it is 
not safe for him to go, is just as demonstrable as any 
problem in mathematics. There is a point beyond 
which it is not safe for him to push his demand for in- 
creased wages, or for fewer hours of labor, which is the 
same thing. Our impression is that he has reached that 
point, and we are speaking in his interest entirely. The 
labor market should always be in that condition which 
tends to draw capital away from real estate. Then rents 
will be low, provisions will stand at a reasonable price, 
every hand will find sufficient employment with suffi- 



320 Every -Day Topics, 

cient pay, and labor and capital be mutually dependent 
friends. We sympathize with every effort of the laborer 
to better his condition, and our simple wish is to warn 
him against supposing that increased wages beyond a 
certain point, which he seems already to have reached, 
will be of the slightest use to him. There is an average 
price for a day's labor which capital can afford to pay, 
and which alone labor can afford to receive. Beyond 
this all is disorder, injustice, and pecuniary adversity 
and loss to every class. The extorted dollar which 
capital cannot afford to give to labor is a curse to the 
hand that receives it. 

Something that Wealth can do for Labor. 

However much of perplexity may surround the ques- 
tions arising from the relations of wealth to labor, there 
are some aspects of these questions about which we are 
sure there ought not to be a very great difference of 
opinion. A man has a right to get rich. There is not a 
laborer in the country who is not personally interested 
in the universal recognition of this right. The desire 
for wealth is a legitimate spur to endeavor, a good mo- 
tive to the exercise of wholesome economy, and a worthy 
incentive to honest and honorable work. It is not the 
highest motive of life, but there is nothing wrong or un- 
worthy in it, so long as it is held in subordination to 
personal integrity and neighborly good-will. There al- 
ways will be rich men and there always ought to be rich 
men. There must be accumulations and combinations 
of capital, else there will be no fields of labor and en- 
terprise into which, for the winning of livelihood and 
wealth, the new generations may enter. We may go 
further and say that there always will be, and always 
ought to be, laborers. Men are born into the world who 



The Rich and the Poor. 321 

are better adapted to labor with the hands than with the 
head, better adapted to production than trade, better 
adapted to execution than invention. Nobody is to 
blame for this. It is the order of nature, and, being the 
order of nature, it is wise. The world could not move 
were the facts different. By the capital and the busi- 
ness capacity of one man, whole neighborhoods and 
towns made up of laborers thrive and rear their families, 
and the relations between the head and the hands of 
such towns and neighborhoods seem, and doubtless are, 
perfectly natural and perfectly healthful. 

It is not with the fact that a man is rich that the rep- 
resentatives of labor quarrel, for the representatives of 
labor would all like to become rich themselves. What 
they particularly desire is to become richer than they 
are. What they supremely desire is to share in the 
wealth which they see others accumulating. This, of 
course, can never be done, except by a natural business 
process. Practical co-operation and the assumption of 
the same business risks to which capitalists expose 
themselves, and the exercise of the same business capa- 
city, can alone give to labor all the wealth which it pro- 
duces. All the friends of labor — and there are multi- 
tudes of them among the rich — will rejoice in any success 
which co-operation and a combination of small savings 
will give to it. There is no other mode of procedure 
that is healthy or even legitimate. Strikes and trades- 
unions and all organized efforts for forcing up wages are 
just as unnatural and outrageous and tyrannical as com- 
binations of capital are for the reduction of wages or — 
what is practically and morally the same — for raising 
the cost of the means of living. Capital has something 
to complain of as well as labor in the matter of service 
and wages. It is undoubtedly and undeniably as dif- 
ficult to get a day's work done by skilful and conscien- 
14* 



322 Every -Day Topics. 

tious hands as it is to get a fair reward for such work, 
and so long as this shall remain true it becomes labor to 
be modest and somewhat careful in its demands. 

After the Chicago fire, three friends met, two of whom 
had been burned out of house and home and the im- 
mense accumulations of successful lives. One of the 
unfortunates said to the other two : " Well, thank God, 
there was some of my money placed where it couldn't 
burn ! " — saying which he turned upon his heel cheer- 
fully, and went to work at his new life. His brother 
in misfortune turned to his companion and said: " That 
man gave away last year nearly a million of dollars, 
and if I had not been a fool I should have done the 
same thing." This brings us to what we wish to say in 
this article, viz., that it is not wealth that is objectiona- 
ble — all the wealth that a man can use for his own 
benefit and the benefit of his family and heirs — but 
the superfluous wealth, that is both a care and a curse 
— superfluous wealth that goes on piling up by thousands 
and millions while great public charities go begging, 
while institutions of learning languish, while thousands 
are living from hand to mouth, while the sittings of 
churches are so costly that the poor cannot take them, 
while halls and libraries and reading-rooms are not es- 
tablished in communities in which they are needed to 
keep whole generations of young men from going to 
perdition, and while a thousand good things are not 
done which only that superfluous wealth can possibly do. 

What, in fact, does the laborer want? He would like 
wealth, but will be entirely content (if demagogues will 
let him alone) if he can have some of those civilizing 
and elevating privileges which only wealth can purchase. 
If the laborer, at the close of his day or week of toil, can 
walk into a nice reading-room and library, in which he 
has the fullest right and privilege ; if on Sunday he 



The Rich and the Poor. 323 

can enter a church which superfluous wealth has made 
his own ; if he can send his ambitious and talented boy 
to college, and so give to him the same chance to rise in 
the world as that enjoyed by the son of his employer ; if 
he can feel that if great disaster should come upon him 
there are funds which wealth has provided to save him 
from want — funds which he knows were dug by labor 
out of the earth, and are thus returned to labor by those 
who have accumulated more than they need — he will be 
content and happy, and he ought to be. Now let us go 
still farther, and declare that, as a rule, he ought to 
have all these possessions and privileges. It is reasona- 
ble for him to ask for and expect them. For this coun- 
try to go on as it is going now, is to bring upon it even 
a worse state of things than at present exists in Eng- 
land, if such a consummation be possible. There are, 
literally, millions of men in England who labor in utter 
hopelessness. Every one of them knows that he must 
work for bread while he can get work, and while he can 
stand, and that then .there is nothing before him but 
death or the work-house. Think of an alternative like 
this standing in the near or distant future before millions 
of workers ! It is enough to make a mountain shudder. 
Yet there are thousands of men in England who keep 
lands for game, and can only spend their incomes by 
squandering them on vice and fashionable ostentation. 
In this country the process is begun. Gigantic for- 
tunes are growing up on every hand. There are already 
many men who are worth many millions of dollars. 
The men of superfluous wealth in all parts of the coun- 
try have it in their power to settle some of the most 
important questions that are now up, and are likely to 
arise, between capital and labor. They also have it in 
their power to make their names immortal as benefac- 
tors of their country, and of that great interest out of 



324 Every- Day Topics. 

whose productive energy every dollar they hold has 
been drawn. 

The superfluous wealth held in this country would 
found ten thousand scholarships in the various colleges 
of the United States for the poor, furnish every town 
with a respectable library and reading-room, give sit- 
tings in churches to ten millions of people who have 
none, and found hospitals and funds of relief for labor 
to meet all emergencies. Nay, what is more, and in 
some respects better, it could lend in many instances to 
labor the capital necessary to secure the profits upon its 
own expenditures. Superfluous wealth can certainly do 
all this. Is there any man who holds it, and who, plac- 
ing his hand upon his heart and lifting his face, dares to 
say that he has no duties that lie in these directions ? 

Let us take a very simple case for the illustration of 
our point. In a certain Western State there is a firm 
engaged in the manufacture and sale of lumber. They 
own immense tracts of pine-lands, employ twelve hun- 
dred laborers, turn out seventy-five million feet of lum- 
ber annually, and make half a million of dollars every 
year, more or less. Now, one hundred thousand dollars 
will pay them royally for their time, an equal sum will 
give a large percentage on their capital invested, and 
yet not one-half of their income is exhausted. Here are 
three hundred thousand dollars left which go to the ac- 
cumulations of superfluous wealth. Now, for these em- 
ployers to imagine that their duties to these twelve hun- 
dred laborers are all done when they have paid them 
their wages, is shamefully to fail to find the divine signifi- 
cance of opportunities. To educate, to christianize, to 
develop, to make happy and self-respectful, to found 
homes for and protect and prosper these people, is the 
office of the superfluous wealth won from the profits of 
their work. We venture to say that in no community in 



The Rich and the Poor. 325 

which the superfluous wealth is used in this way will 
there ever be any questions between wealth and labor 
that are hard to settle. The holders of such wealth, 
wherever they may be, bear mainly in their hands the 
responsibility of whatever difficulties may hereafter arise 
between wealth and labor in the United States. Let them 
look to it and be wise. 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL MEN. 

* The Gentleman in Politics. 

WE do not doubt that many thousands have shared 
with us the pleasure of reading Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid's Dartmouth address, on " The Scholar in Poli- 
tics." The programme of active influence which he 
spreads before the American scholar is sufficiently ex- 
tensive, and the arguments by which he commends it for 
adoption sufficiently strong and sound. Yet the ques- 
tion has occurred to us whether, after all, Mr. Carlyle's 
" Able Man," and Mr. Herbert Spencer's " Thinker,'' 
and Mr. Reid's " Scholar," who are one and the same 
person, are quite sufficient for the just and satisfactory 
handling of the matters which this address spreads be- 
fore us in detail. " How are you going to punish 
crime ? " We do not quite see what scholarship has to 
do with the settlement of that question, or what the 
scholar has to do with it, specially, beyond other men. 
" How are you going to stop official stealing ? " The 
question may interest the scholar, and he ought, indeed, 
to assist in settling it aright ; but as a scholar, specially, 
we do not see what he can do, or may be expected 
to do, beyond other men. " How are you going to 
control your corporations ? " Here cultivated brains 
may help us to do something— to contrive something ; 



Politics and Political Men. 327 

yet, after all, what we want is not the way to control 
corporations, but corporations that do not need to be 
controlled. "What shall be the relations between 
capital and labor ? " The scholar ought to be able 
to help us here. " What shall be done with our Indi- 
ans ? " " How may we best appoint our civil officers ? " 
These questions, with others relating to universal suf- 
frage and the unlimited annexation of inferior races, 
make up Mr. Reid's very solid and serious catalogue. 

There is work enough, legitimate work, for the Amer- 
ican scholar, in the study and intelligent handling of 
these questions, but the fact that there is a considera- 
ble number of American scholars mixed up with every 
scheme of iniquity in the country leads us to suspect 
that the country is not to be saved by scholarship alone. 
There are two sides to the matter, as there are to most 
matters. In our late civil war, it was West Point pitted 
against West Point, each side being actuated by its own 
independent ideas of duty and patriotism. Military 
scholarship had a very important office to perform in 
settling the question between the two sections of the 
country, but it had to struggle with military scholar- 
ship in order to do it. We do not know why we are not 
quite as likely to find the scholar on the wrong side as 
on the right side of politics. Mr. Bancroft and Mr. 
Everett were neighbors once. They represented the 
height of scholarly culture, and the two extremes of po- 
litical opinion. They certainly assisted in making re- 
spectable whatever was bad in the party to which they 
respectively belonged, whatever else they did or failed 
to do. All that we wish to say, in dissent from Mr. 
Reid, or rather in addition to him, is that scholarship 
does not necessarily lead to any common good conclusion 
in politics, and that it may be, or may become, as base 
as any other element. 



328 Every -Day Topics. 

What we really want is gentlemen in politics. If our 
political men were only gentlemen, even if they were no 
more than ordinarily intelligent, we should find our po- 
litical affairs in a good condition, and the great, questions 
that stand before us in a fair way of being properly ad- 
justed. A gentleman is a person who knows something 
of the world, who possesses dignity and self-respect, who 
recognizes the rights of others and the duties he owes to 
society in all his relations, who would as soon commit 
suicide as stain his palm with a bribe, who would not 
degrade himself by intrigues. There are various types 
of gentlemen, too, and the higher the type the better 
the politician. If his character and conduct are based 
on sound moral principle — if he is governed by the rule 
of right — that is better than mere pride of character or . 
gentlemanly instinct. If, beyond all, he is a man of 
faith and religion — a Christian gentleman — he is the 
highest type of a gentleman, and in his hands the ques- 
tions which Mr. Reid has proposed to the scholar would 
have the fairest handling that men are capable of giving 
them. The more the Christian gentleman knows, the 
better politician he will make, and in him, and in him 
only, will scholarship come to its finest issues in politics. 
We do not think that the worst feature of our politics is 
lack of intelligence in our politicians. There is a great 
deal of cultivated brain in Congress. Public questions 
are understood and intelligently discussed there. Even 
there it is not always that scholarship shows superior 
ability. Men who show their capacity to manage affairs 
are quite as apt to come from the plainly educated as 
from the ranks of scholarship. Congress does not suf- 
fer from lack of knowledge and culture half as much 
as it does from lack of principle. It is the men who 
push personal and party purposes that poison legislation. 
If Congress were composed of gentlemen, we could even 



Politics and Political Men. 329 

dispense with what scholars we have, and be better off 
than we are to-day. 

In the government of our cities we could very well 
afford to get along without scholars, if we could have 
only modestly educated gentlemen. If the heavy-jawed, 
florid-faced, full-bellied, and diamond-brooched bully 
who now typifies the city politician were put to his ap- 
propriate work of railroad building, or superintending 
gangs of ignorant workmen, and there could be put in 
his place good, quiet business men, of gentlemanly in- 
stincts and of sound moral principle, we could get along 
very comfortably without the scholar, though there would 
not be the slightest objection to him. In brief, we want 
better men than we have, a great deal more than we 
want brighter or better educated men. Scholarship is 
a secondary rather than a primary consideration : the 
gentleman first, the scholar if he is a gentleman, and 
not otherwise. If Christian gentlemen were in power, 
many of the questions that appeal to us for settlement 
would settle themselves. We should not be called upon, 
for instance, to stop official stealing. Instead of trying 
to ascertain how we shall punish murder, we should dry 
up the fountains of murder. Instead of seeking a mode 
of controlling corporations, we should only need to find 
some mode of putting only gentlemen into corporations. 
Our laws are good enough in the main : we want them 
executed, and in order that they may be executed we 
need a judiciary of Christian gentlemen, with executive 
officers, loyal to the law. As long as notorious scamps, 
scholarly or otherwise, are in power, not much headway 
can be made in politics. Until we demand something 
more and something better in our politicians than knowl- 
edge or scholarship, until we demand that they shall be 
gentlemen, we shall take no step forward. George 
Washington got along very well as a politician on a lim- 



330 Every -Day Topics. 

ited capital of culture, and a very large one of patriot- 
ism and personal dignity. Aaron Burr was a scholar, 
whose lack of principle spoiled him for any good end in 
politics, and made his name a stench in the nostrils of 
his country. 

The Bane of the Republic. 

There can be no doubt that the prolific source of all 
our notable political corruption is office-seeking. Almost 
never does a political office come to a man in this coun- 
try unsought, and the exceptions are very rarely credit- 
able to political purity. When men are sought for and 
adopted as candidates for office, it is, ninety-nine times 
in every hundred, because they are available for the 
objects of a party. Thus it is that selfish or party in- 
terest, and not the public good, becomes the ruling mo- 
tive in all political preferment : and the results are the 
legitimate fruit of the motive. Out of this motive spring 
all the intrigues, bargains, sales of influence and patron- 
age, briberies, corruptions and crookednesses that make 
our politics a reproach and our institutions a by-word 
among the nations. We are in the habit of calling our 
government popular, and of fancying that we have a 
good deal to do in the management of our own affairs ; 
but we would like to ask those who may chance to read 
this paper how much, beyond the casting of their votes, 
they have ever had to do with the government of the na- 
tion. Have they ever done more than to vote for those 
who have managed to get themselves selected as candi- 
dates for office, or those who, for party reasons, deter- 
mined exclusively by party leaders — themselves seekers 
for power or plunder — have been selected by others ? It 
is all a "Ring," and has been for years, and we, the 
people, are called upon to indorse and sustain it. 



Politics and Political Men. 331 

To indorse and sustain the various political rings is 
the whole extent, practically, of the political privileges 
of the people of the United States. The fact is abomi- 
nable and shameful, but it is a fact " which nobody can 
deny." It humiliates one to make the confession, but it 
is true that very rarely is any man nominated for a high 
office who is so much above reproach and so manifestly 
the choice of the people that his sworn supporters do not 
feel compelled to sustain him by lies and romances and 
all sorts of humbuggery. The people are treated like 
children. Songs are made for them to sing. Their eyes 
are dazzled with banners and processions, and every pos- 
sible effort is made to induce them to believe that the 
candidate is precisely what he is not and never was — the 
candidate of the people. Our candidates are all the 
candidates of the politicians, and never those of the peo- 
ple. Our choice is a choice between evils, and to this 
we are forced. Second and third rate men, dangerous 
men, men devoured by the greed for power and place, 
men without experience in statesmanship, men who have 
made their private pledges of consideration for services 
promised, men who have selected themselves, or who 
have been selected entirely because they can be used, 
are placed before us for our suffrages, and we are com- 
pelled to a choice between them. Thus, year after year, 
doing the best we seem to be able to do, we are used in 
the interest of men and cliques who have no interest to 
serve but their own. 

And all this in the face of the patent truth that an 
office-seeker is, by the very vice of his nature, character, 
and position, the man who ought to be avoided and never 
indorsed or favored. There is something in the greed 
itself, and more in the immodesty of its declaration in 
any form, which make him the legitimate object of dis- 
trust and popular contempt. Office-seeking is not the 



332 Every - Day Topics. 

calling of a gentleman. No man with self-respect and 
the modesty that accompanies real excellence of charac- 
ter and genuine sensibility can possibly place himself in 
the position of an office-seeker, and enter upon the in- 
trigues with low-minded and mercenary men, which are 
necessary to the securing of his object. It is a debasing, 
belittling, ungentlemanly business. It takes from him 
any claim to popular respect which a life of worthy la- 
bor may have won, and brands him as a man of vulgar 
instincts and weak character. We marvel at the cor- 
ruptions of politics, but why should we marvel ? It is 
the office-seekers who are in office. It is the men who 
have sold their manhood for power that we have assisted 
to place there, obeying the commands or yielding to the 
wishes of our political leaders. It is notorious that our 
best men are not in politics, and cannot be induced to 
enter the field, and that our political rewards and honors 
are bestowed upon those who are base enough to ask for 
them. 

A few of the great men of the nation have, during the 
last thirty years, yielded to that which was meanest in 
them, and become seekers for the august office of the 
presidency. Now, to wish for a high place of power and 
usefulness is a worthy ambition, especially when it is 
associated with those gifts and that culture which accord 
with its dignities and render one fit for its duties ; but to 
ask for it, and intrigue for it, and shape the policy of a 
life for it, is the lowest depth to which voluntary degra- 
dation can go. These men, every one of them, have 
come out from the fruitless chase with garments drag- 
gled, and reputation damaged, and the lesson of a great 
life — lived faithfully out upon its own plane — forever 
spoiled. How much more purely would the names of 
Webster, and Clay, and Cass shine to-day had they never 
sought for the highest place of power ; and how insane 



Politics and Political Men. 333 

are those great men now living who insist on repeating 
their mistakes ! It would be ungracious to write the 
names of these, and it is a sad reflection that it is not 
necessary. They rise as quickly to him who reads as to 
him who writes. The great, proud names are dragged 
from their heights, and made the foot-balls of the politi- 
cal arena. The lofty heads are bowed, and the pure 
vestments are stained. Never again, while time lasts, 
can they stand where they have stood. They.have made 
voluntary exposure of their weakness, and dropped into 
fatal depths of popular contempt. Now, when we re- 
member that we are ruled mainly by men who differ 
from these only in the fact that they are smaller, and 
have not fallen so far because they had not so far to fall, 
we can realize something of the degradation which we 
have ourselves received in placing them in power. 

What is our remedy ? We confess that we are well- 
nigh hopeless in the matter. Bread and butter are vigi- 
lant. Politics to the politician is bread and butter, and 
we are all so busy in winning our own that we do not 
take the time to watch and thwart his intrigues. The 
only remedy thus far resorted to — and that has always 
been temporary — is a great uprising against corruption 
and wrong. We have seen something of it in the popu- 
lar protest against the thieves of the New York Ring. 
What we need more than anything else, perhaps, is a 
thoroughly virtuous and independent press. We believe 
it impossible to work effectually except through party 
organizations, but such should be the intelligence, vir- 
tue, and vigilance of the press and the people that party 
leaders shall be careful to execute the party will. We 
need nothing to make our government the best of all 
governments, except to take it out of the hands of self- 
seeking and office-seeking politicians, and to place in 
power those whom the people regard as their best men. 



334 Every -Day Topics. 

Until this can be done, place will bring personal honor 
to no man, and our republicanism will be as contempti- 
ble among the nations as it is unworthy in itself. 

Our President. 

In the good time coming — the golden age — the blessed 
thousand years — which all Christian people pray for and 
expect, we are to have, among the multitude of excel- 
lent things, our particular President. When will it be ? 
And what will be his name ? The time when can hardly 
be foretold, and it matters very little by what name we 
may call him, but we can tell even now what sort of a 
person he will be, and it is a comfort to think of the 
dignities and gracious amenities that will accompany his 
manly sway. 

In the first place, he will be a gentleman, and will 
have the manners of a gentleman. No vulgar peculiar- 
ities will commend him to vulgar people. He will hu- 
miliate himself by no appeals to low taste for securing 
the popular approval and support. The dirty brood of 
office-seekers and contractors and jobbing mercenaries 
will stand abashed in his pure presence. Nay, he will 
be hedged about by a dignity that will protect him from 
the approach of those upon whom he can only look with 
loathing and contempt. Petty politicians will find in 
him no congenial society, and his councils will be those 
of statesmanship. The representatives of foreign gov- 
ernments will come, with all the high and gentle courte- 
sies of which they may be masters, to pay him court, as 
the first gentleman in a nation of many millions. The 
people who have placed him in power will look up to 
him with affectionate pride as their model man, and as 
the highest product of American civilization. 

Again, he will be a wise man, and wise particularly 



Politics and Political Men. 335 

in statecraft, through a life of conscientious study and 
careful and familiar practice in positions that have nat- 
urally led to his final elevation. He will live in an age 
when the present low ideas of availability will have 
passed away, and when personal fitness will be the 
essential qualification for place. He will have been 
brought into competition with none but those of his own 
kind. No warrior burdened with laurels for great 
achievements in his awful profession, no literary chief- 
tain though crowned king in his own peculiar realm, 
no demagogue fingering the strings of a thousand in- 
trigues, no boor dazzling the populace with the shows of 
wealth and polluting the ballot-box with its gifts, will 
have degraded the contest which resulted in his election. 
He will have reached his seat because a wise nation be- 
lieved him to be its wisest man. 

He will be a man of honor too, a man who will sooner 
die than permit any good reason to exist for the sus- 
picion that he will use the privileges of his place for the 
perpetuation of his power. He will be a "one term" 
man, who will never for an instant permit his personal 
prospects to influence him in the performance of public 
duty ; and when that term shall expire, he will retire 
to a still higher elevation in the popular esteem and 
reverence, and will not sink into the humble and almost 
disgraceful obscurity to which so many of his unworthy 
predecessors have been condemned. He will represent 
in his faith and practice the religion on which his coun- 
try's purity and prosperity rest ; for in that grand day 
the cavils and questions and infidelities that disgrace our 
shallow age will have passed away, and the brain and 
heart of Christendom will be christianized. There will 
be reverence for worth in the popular heart, and a Chris- 
tian nation will have none but a Christian ruler. 

After St. Paul returned from his vision of those heav- 



336 Every-Day Topics. 

enly things which it was not lawful for him to speak 
about, the small affairs of the men around him, and the 
mean and vulgar ways of those with whom he associated 
and to whom he preached, must have been somewhat 
disgusting. So, after looking at the ideal President in 
" the good time coming," we confess to a spasm of pain 
as we contemplate the political conflict that begins the 
moment a President is elected, with relation to his suc- 
cessor. Is it to be a conflict of great principles of gov- 
ernment, earnestly held by men equally wise ? Is it to 
be a conflict between men equally pure and equally 
patriotic ? Is it to be a conflict between statesmen who 
are brought forward because of wisdom acquired by long 
service of the State in other capacities ? Is it to be a 
conflict between gentlemen mutually respecting one an- 
other ? Is it to be a conflict in which the dominant desire 
shall be that the best man, the most honorable man, the 
truest Christian, the wisest man, the purest and highest 
statesman, may win? Or are considerations of personal 
and party advantage to be dominant ? Is slander to be 
let loose ? Is dirt to be thrown ? Are the proprieties of 
society to be so outraged by personalities, that all decent 
men will learn vto shun politics as they would shun ex- 
posure to a foul disease ? There certainly is a better 
way than the one we walk in, and there are some at least 
who would be glad to find it. Let us try to find it. 



AMERICAN LIFE AND MANNERS. 

The Old Types. 

THE country-bred men and women who have reached 
the age of fifty years are all able to recall a pic- 
ture — lying now far back in the mellow atmosphere of 
the past — of a band of children, standing hand-in-hand 
by the side of the dusty highway, and greeting with smite 
and bow and " courtesy" every adult passenger whom 
they met on their walks to and from school. They were 
instructed in this polite obeisance by their teachers. It 
was a part of the old New England drill, which, so far as 
we know, has been entirely discontinued. We do not 
remember to have seen such a sight as this for twenty- 
five years, It would be such an old-fashioned affair to 
witness now, that multitudes would only reward it with 
a smile of amusement ; yet with all our boasted progress 
can we show anything that is better or more suggestive 
of downright, healthy good-breeding ? Are the typical 
boy and girl of the period better-mannered, more rever- 
ent, more respectful toward manhood and womanhood, 
more deferential to age ? Do they grow up with more 
regard for morality, religion, law, than they did then ? 
Alas ! with all our books, and our new processes of edu- 
cation, and the universal sharpness of the juvenile intel- 
lect of the day, we miss something that was very pre- 
cious among the children of the old time — reverence for 
Vol. I.— 15 



338 Every-Day Topics. 

men and women, systematic courtesy in simple forms, 
and respect for the wisdom of the pulpit, the school-room 
and the fireside. If we were called upon to describe the 
model boy or girl, we should be obliged to call up the 
old type — the rude, healthy lads and lasses who snow- 
balled each other, battled with each other in spelling- 
bouts, and imbibed the spirit of reverence for their elders 
with every influence of church and school and home. 
We have made progress in some directions, but in some 
we have sadly retrograded. Our boys are all young 
men, and our girls are fearfully old. Our typical child 
has no longer the spirit of a child. 

Occasionally we meet what are popularly denominated 
" gentlemen of the old school." We have only enough 
of them among us to make us wish that we had many 
more — men of courtly dignity, of unobtrusive dress, of 
manners that seem a little formal, but which are, never- 
theless, the manners of gentlemen. They remind us of 
the worthies of the old colonial time, and of the later 
time of the Revolution — of Washington and Madison and 
Franklin — of men whom all revered, and to whom all 
gave obeisance. Into what has this style of men grown, 
or into what have they been degraded ? Looking where 
they would be pretty certain to congregate if they were 
in existence, we see them not. Has any one seen them at 
Newport during the past season ? Have they abounded 
at Saratoga ? Have they been found in dignified and 
graceful association with the President of the United 
States at Long Branch ? Are they presiding over muni- 
cipal affairs in our great cities ? Do they enter largely 
into the composition of Congress, even after we have 
subtracted the gamblers and carpet-baggers ? If we 
have them in considerable numbers, where are they ? 
Certainly they have either ceased to be reproduced in 
our generation, or they are so much disgusted with the 



American Life and Manners. 339 

typeof men met in public life and fashionable society, 
that they studiously hide themselves from sight. There 
is little comfort in either alternative, but we must accept 
one or the other. 

Progress has doubtless been made in many things. 
We are richer, better clothed, better housed, better fed 
and better educated than we used to be. Our railroads 
run everywhere ; our well-nigh exhaustless resources 
have been broached in a thousand directions ; we count 
the increase of our population by millions ; the emi- 
grations of the world all move toward us ; colleges, 
and churches and school-houses have gone up with the 
building of the States, and the States themselves have 
multiplied so rapidly that not one American in ten 
knows exactly how many are in the Union. All this is 
true, but during the past twenty-five years we judge 
that we have made no improvement in the typical 
American gentleman. The old type of merchants — the 
old type of statesmen — the old type of gentlemen — 
surely we have not improved upon these. The restless, 
greedy, grasping, time-serving spirit of our generation 
has vitiated and degraded this type, and in our efforts 
at improvement we may well go back to the past for our 
models. 

What shall we say about the old type of women as 
compared with the present representatives of the best 
of the sex? The saintly, heroic, frugal, and industrious 
wives and mothers of the earlier days of the Republic — 
have we improved upon them ? Have the latter-day doc- 
trines of woman's rights made them more modest, more 
self-denying, more virtuous, better wives and mothers, 
purer -and more active Christians, better heads of the in- 
stitution of home, more lovely companions for men ? 
We are aware that the answer to those questions in- 
volves the approval or the condemnation of the doctrines 



34-0 Every -Day Topics. 

themselves, and it is well that the men and women of 
America be called upon to see and decide upon those 
doctrines from this point of view. Is the type of Ameri- 
can woman improved ? Has it been improved in the 
last twenty years, especially inside the circles that have 
taken the improvement of the position of woman upon 
their hands ? America is full of good women. As a 
rule they are undoubtedly better than the men, but 
certainly the men whose instincts are true are attracted 
most to those women who approach nearest to the an- 
cient type. 

The final result of our civilization is to be reckoned in 
character. If this is not satisfactory, nothing is satisfac- 
tory. If we are not rearing better children and ripening 
better men and women than we were a century ago, 
then something is radically wrong, and the quicker we 
retrace our steps to see where we have diverged from 
the right track the better. The typical American — man, 
woman and child — is the representative product of all 
the institutions and influences of our civilization. As 
the type improves or degenerates, do these institutions 
and influences stand approved or condemned before the 
world. Progress cannot be reckoned in railroads and 
steamboats, or counted in money, or decided in any 
way by the census tables. Are we producing better 
children and better men and women ? That is the 
question which decides everything, and we have called 
attention to the old types in order that we may arrive at 
an intelligent conclusion. 

The Sins of American Good-nature. 

An intelligent foreigner, travelling in America, was 
asked what he regarded as the most prominent charac- 
teristic of the people of the country. He replied : " The 



American Life and Manners. 341 

Americans are the best-natured people on the face of 
the earth." His judgment was entirely just. There is 
no other people, of anything like equal intelligence, 
that so absolutely refuses to be irritated by the imposi- 
tions and annoyances of life. If an American is cheated 
in a shop, he simply refrains from entering the shop 
again. Instead of returning and demanding his rights, 
he pockets his bad bargain, because he does not like a 
quarrel, and cannot afford to take the trouble of it. 
After paying for a seat in a horse-car, the American 
holds himself ready to yield his right to any lady who en- 
ters, and to continue yielding his right until he is packed, 
standing like a bullock in a cattle-train, with fifty others, 
one-half of whom, in England or France, never would 
have been permitted to step foot upon the platform. 
The American consents that there shall be no such word 
as " complet" attached to any public conveyance. If a 
railway conductor, or a hotel clerk, or a shopkeeper's 
clerk, or any other person whose business it is to be 
courteous to the public, puts on airs and snubs the 
American cusfomer, it is the ordinary habit of that cus- 
tomer to "stand it" rather than protest and insist on 
the treatment which he ought to receive. Rogues get 
into office, and, with big hands in the public purse, help 
themselves to its contents, and continue to do this year 
after year, the owners of the purse all the time knowing 
the fact, yet being too easy and good-natured to make 
even an outcry. Everybody is busy, and so the evils 
that would stir the blood of an Englishman to boiling, 
and arouse all his combativeness, are quietly ignored 
or carefully shunned. 

It is not a pleasant thing to say or to reflect upon, but 
the plain truth is that there is something cowardly and 
unmanly in all this. We have no special admiration of 
the touchiness of an Englishman regarding the sacred 



342 Every-Day Topics, 

rights of his personality. The hedgehog is not an 
agreeable bird, and we have no wish to see it substi- 
tuted for the American eagle, but a bundle of quills is 
better calculated to command respect than a ball of 
putty. The man who stands stiffly in his tracks and 
says, " Touch me not ! " presents a very much more re- 
spectable appearance than the man who dodges him 
and every other obstacle which he encounters in his 
way. We are all very much afraid of hurting the feel- 
ings of somebody, when we know, or ought to know, 
that somebody's feelings ought to be hurt, and that 
nothing would do somebody so much good as to have 
his feelings hurt. We forget that there are things of 
infinitely greater importance than bad people's feelings 
— things to which we owe infinitely higher duty. A man 
has no moral right to permit himself to be robbed or 
cheated. If he tamely submits to such a crime he be- 
comes accessory to it, and encourages the rascal at 
whose hand he has suffered to make a victim of the next 
unsuspecting customer. 

The characteristic American good-nature not only 
encourages and confers impunity upon all sorts of 
wrong, but it seriously reacts upon American character. 
It begets a toleration of every kind of moral evil that 
brings at last insensibility to it. There cannot be a 
very wide moral difference between the man who com- 
mits crime and the man who weakly tolerates it. The 
active sinner is, if anything, the braver and the nobler 
of the two. He at least manifests a courage which the 
other does not. There is nothing that America needs 
more than the bold and persistent assertion, in every 
practical way, of its sense of what is fair and honest, 
and right and proper and courteous, between man and 
man. If every good man would stand squarely by this, 
even at the sacrifice of his reputation for good-nature, 



American Life and Manners. 343 

he would find himself growing better day by day ; he 
would find that the good elements of society were rap- 
idly gaining influence, and that rogues were growing 
careful and getting scarce. 

Corporations like those which manage our railroads 
will impose upon the public just as long as the popular 
good-nature will permit them to do so. Their primary 
object is to make money. They will furnish to the 
public just such accommodations as the public will be 
content with, and those accommodations will be insuffi- 
cient and mean unless the public demand more and 
better. 

There are more evils than we can count that grow 
directly or indirectly out of our national good-nature. 
Our hearts need hardening, and our backs need stiffen- 
ing. We ought to possess more manliness, and we ought 
to exercise it. To insist upon our rights in a manly and 
temperate way is to give a lesson in Christian civili- 
zation. It makes us stronger and more self-respectful, 
and restrains the spirit of lawlessness around us. One 
prominent reason why crime thrives and the public 
morals go from bad to worse, is that they meet with no 
rebuke. The good people bemoan the facts in a weak 
way among themselves, but they refuse to meet the evils 
they bewail, front to front, with open challenge and bold 
conflict. Crime is a coward in the presence of courage- 
ous virtue, and shrinks and crawls whenever it boldly 
asserts itself. Now, virtue shrinks and crawls, while 
crime struts the streets and deals out such privileges to 
retiring decency and cowardly good-nature as it can 
afford. It even imitates our good-nature, and smiles 
upon us from the high places of its power and privilege, 
and laughs over its profits — and its joke. 



344 Every -Day Topics, 

^Esthetics at a Premium. 

Our good Americans who flock to Europe every year 
usually return prepared to talk about the absorption of 
the New World in practical affairs, and the lack of the 
aesthetic element in American life. It is not to be ex- 
pected, they say, in a tone which carries any amount of 
patronage and pardon with it, that a people who have 
forests to fell, and railroads to build, and prairies to 
plant, and cities to rear, and mines to uncover, and a 
great experiment to make in democratic government, 
should have time to devote to matters of taste. These 
latter things come with accumulated wealth and centu- 
ries of culture. We are necessarily in the raw now. The 
material overlies the spiritual. The whole nation, under 
the stimulus of a greed for wealth and the wide facilities 
for procuring it, is base. The almighty dollar is the 
national god. But it is confidently expected and pre- 
dicted that we shall do better by and by. Let us see 
if there are not a few evidences that the better day is 
dawning. 

New York has her Central Park, in which may be 
seen more genuine art and taste than have been devoted 
to any other park in the world. The Champs Elysees 
of Paris, the Thiergarten of Berlin, and Hyde Park in 
London, are all inferior to the Central Park in every 
respect. Now, to show how the element of taste in our 
life is surpassing the element of use — how the spiritual 
predominates over the material and practical — we have 
only to refer to our docks. It must be a matter of the 
serenest satisfaction and the most complacent pride that 
we, who have the reputation of being a city of money- 
getters and worshippers of the useful and the material, 
can point to our docks as the dirtiest, the most insuffi- 
cient, and the least substantial of any possessed by any 



American Life and Manners. 345 

first-class city on the face of the globe. To the strangers 
who visit us from abroad we can proudly say : You have 
accused us of supreme devotion to the material grandeur 
of our city and our land. Look at our rotten and reeking 
docks, and see how little we care for even the decencies 
of commercial equipment, and then, if you can get safely 
on shore, come up to our Central Park, and forget all 
the coarser elements of life in the appointments and 
atmosphere of taste which will there surround you ! 

Have we not just founded a Metropolitan Museum of 
Art ? Have we not established the nucleus of a collec- 
tion which is to go on gathering to itself the contribu- 
tions of the world and the ages ? Are not our capital- 
ists hoarding money for it ? Do not our merchant 
princes go on piling up their millions with the proud de- 
sign of remembering it in their wills ? Nay, is not 
America the great art market of the world? Do we not 
run Rome as we would run a mill ? Have we not trans- 
formed Munich, with her thousand artists, into a manu- 
factory ? Is not all Paris under tribute to us ? Is it not 
our gold that makes yellower than sunshine the air in 
the studios of Florence? Yet we are accused of su-' 
preme devotion to the material, and this, too, in face of 
the fact that our city markets would be accounted a dis- 
grace to any city in Christendom ! We do not even un- 
dertake to have markets that are decently clean. The 
costliest viands that crown our feasts come from realms 
foul with impure odors, and from stalls past which a 
clean skirt never sweeps without disaster. To the cai- 
tiff who should accuse us of a gross and sensual life, 
and of devotion to the matters of eating and drinking, 
we would say : Look at Fulton Market — the meanest 
shed that ever covered a city's food — and then, when 
you have seen how little we care for even the appear- 
ance of cleanliness, go with us to the Metropolitan Mu- 



346 Every-Day Topics. 

seum of Art, to a hundred private galleries on Fifth and 
Madison Avenues, and to the walls of drawing-rooms 
that are covered with millions of dollars' worth of pic- 
tures, and acknowledge that the aesthetic holds us in 
absolute thrall, while we take no care for what we eat 
and what we drink ! 

New York a city devoted to the material ! Why, it 
has not a single well-kept street ! There is not one 
street in the whole city that is as clean any day as every 
principal street of Paris is every day. There are scores 
of streets that are piled with garbage from one end to the 
other. There are scores of streets so rough with worn- 
out pavements that no ordinary carriage can be driven 
through them at a rapid rate without the danger of 
breaking it. There are streets by the hundred that hold 
people so thoughtless of even the common decencies of 
life, that they keep their ash-barrels constantly upon 
their sidewalks, where they stand in long rows — lines of 
eloquent monuments — testifying to the absorption of our 
citizens in purely aesthetic pursuits. When we pass from 
such streets as these into houses holding the best- 
dressed men and women in the world, surrounded by 
every appointment of tasteful luxury — men and women 
whose feet press nothing but velvet, and whose eyes see 
nothing but forms of beauty (except when they happen 
to look out of the window) — we may well point the finger 
of scorn at those who taunt us with being devoted to the 
gratification of our senses. New York devoted to the 
senses ! Why, it is not even courteous to the senses : 
it does not so much as hold its nose ! 

We might proceed with the illustrations of our point, 
but they would be interminable. We might show how 
we have so left out of consideration the matter of utility 
in the erection of beautiful churches that we have spent 
all our available money without giving half our people 



American Life and Manners. 347 

sittings, and in doing so have made the sittings so ex- 
pensive that not half of them are occupied. There is 
money enough invested in churches in New York to give 
every man and woman a sitting, and support the minis- 
ters, without costing a poor man a cent. Can this justly 
be called supreme devotion to practical affairs ? Our 
love of fine architecture has even led us to forget our 
religion, and yet we are accused of having no love of 
art ! Let us comfort ourselves with the consciousness 
that we have arrived at that pitch of civilization which 
enables us to hold an even head with Rome, whose at- 
mosphere of art is malaria, or with old Cologne, whose 
exquisite cathedral bathes its feet in gutters that reek 
with the vapors of disease and the nastinesses of a 
people absorbed in making Cologne water and in the 
worship of eleven thousand virgins, none of whom are 
living. 

The Conservative Resources of American Life. 

We are witnessing, in these passing days, new demon- 
strations of the conservative influences and resources of 
American life. Reflecting persons are sometimes scared 
by the liberty and latitude which our institutions confer 
upon every kind and class of men, and are filled with 
the gravest apprehensions while contemplating the ten- 
dencies of society to corruption and extravagance, or 
other forms of vice and folly. With a press whose lib- 
erty is absolutely unbridled ; with the privilege of uni- 
versal self-direction and self-service unwatched and un- 
touched by the police ; with a freedom of speech and 
movement that more frequently forgets than remembers 
that there is such a thing as law, and with an underlying 
conviction and consciousness that human nature is self- 
ish, and that great masses of society are almost hope- 



348 Every -Day Topics. 

lessly degraded, it is not wonderful that there are think- 
ing men who look despondingly into the future, and who 
load their lips with prophecies of evil. 

A gentleman who had been at both the sieges of Paris, 
and who had spent much time in Europe, was present 
during the^late Orange riot in New York, and witnessed 
its suppression. He was filled with wonder at the ease 
with which it was handled, the lack of all apprehension 
of a dangerous outbreak on the part of the people of the 
city, and with the fact that everybody went to bed on 
the night of the riot and slept soundly, in the confident 
expectation of finding the city in perfect peace the next 
morning. Such an event in any capital of Europe would 
have aroused the intensest suspicions on the part of the 
government, and led to the most jealous and efficient 
precautions, while the people, greedy for change and 
ready for anything that would give them liberty, if only 
for a day, would have been roused into a fury of sleep- 
less excitement. In Paris it would have been the sig- 
nal for a revolution. In New York, opposed by a militia 
called out from among the people themselves, it never 
had the chance to do any damage except to the mis- 
guided men who were engaged in it. 

Not long ago New York City was in the hands of a 
gang of such gigantic thieves as the world has rarely 
produced, in all its centuries of fruitful wickedness. 
There was no ingenuity of corrupt expedient that had 
been left untried, in the achievement and retention of 
power. There was no scheme of plunder too bold and 
shameless for them to undertake. They had suborned 
judges, and bribed legislators, and tampered with ad- 
ministration. Their tools and servants were in offices of 
trust. Their paid bullies were a terror at every polling- 
place. Surrounded by every appointment and feasted 
by every ministry of luxury, they defied public senti- 



American Life and Manners. 349 

ment and public punishment, and laid their plans for 
the future with the confidence of integrity, and half de- 
ceived themselves with the thought that they were gen- 
tlemen. But the press, in its fearless liberty, laid hold 
of them, dragged them forth from their strongholds of 
crime and shame, and exposed them to the execration of 
the men they had wronged and robbed. The sceptre 
dropped from their hands, and in a few brief months 
the whole infamous gang became fugitives from justice. 

No scheme of iniquity can stand under the exposure 
of a faithful press. The little pencil of Nast alone, 
when employed in a thoroughly righteous cause, is more 
powerful than armies of men and millions of money. It 
is the habit of some good men to bemoan the licentious- 
ness of the press, and its undignified and often disgrace- 
ful quarrels and personalities, but with all its faults it 
is the very bulwark of the public safety. Without the 
press, the great metropolis would be to-day in the hands 
of the Ring. Indeed, without the press — perfectly un- 
trammelled — there can be no hope of the perpetuation 
of the liberties of the country. That power which kings 
and emperors fear, and seek to regulate and control, is 
the power which alone can preserve the Republic. Mon- 
archs recognize its voice as the voice of the people, and 
the republic that fails to do the same becomes its own 
enemy. 

In contemplating society, we easily detect certain 
tendencies that seem to have no end except in disaster 
or destruction. "Whither are we drifting?" is the 
questioning cry. There is prevailing and increasing in- 
fidelity to the marital vow ; there is growing of lavish 
luxury ; there is deepening and spreading corruption in 
high places ; there is augmentation of desire to win 
wealth without work ; there is a fiercer burning of the 
fever of speculation ; there is a lengthening reach and 



350 Every-Day Topics. 

strengthening grasp upon power on the part of great 
corporations, whose effect is to limit the liberty and di- 
minish the prosperity of the people. We mark these 
tendencies to enormous and disastrous evil, and it seems 
as if nothing could avert its near or distant coming ; but 
at last the people turn their eyes upon the disease that 
threatens greatest danger, the press in tones of thunder 
speaks the voice of the popular conviction and repre- 
hension, and all in good time the wrong is righted, the 
drift toward destruction is arrested, and the agents of 
mischief are reformed or rendered powerless. This is 
the lesson of the last ten years of American life, and it 
is full of hope and promise. We are not likely to en- 
counter anything more terrible in the future than those 
evils — political and social — which this conservative 
power has arrested in their course or expelled. We 
drift toward a precipice, but when the waters quicken, 
and we feel ourselves tossing among the rapids, we 
spring to the oars, and with free, strong arms we row 
back to broader waters and sweeter and safer shores. 
We have the strongest faith in the conservative power 
of our free American life, and, with all our tendencies 
to evil, we firmly believe that we have the strongest 
government and the safest society of any great people 
whose life helps to weave the current history of Chris- 
tendom. 

Living with Windows Open. 

More than any other people in the world, Americans 
live with their windows open. Less than any people 
who have homes do they regard their homes as sacredly 
private. Every family knows its neighbor's affairs, and 
nothing transpires concerning the most private relations 
that is not immediately noised abroad, discussed and 



American Life and Manners. 351 

j udged by meddling and gossiping communities. Homes 
that should be guarded with the most jealous care are of 
easy access to strangers, who come with the flimsiest 
credentials, or with none at all, and every year pro- 
duces its crop of personal and social disasters which this 
unwise exposure of the soil gives to reckless or villa- 
nous sowing. If a man should wish to see how Americans 
differ in this thing from other nations, let him try to get 
into a German or an English family, or even into a 
French family, abroad. He will at once discover that 
he has undertaken to do a very difficult thing. No man 
can obtain an inside view of the economies and habits 
of a foreign home, and share in its communion, who 
does not enter it with a record or an introduction and 
indorsement which place him above suspicion. Students 
who go to continental Europe to study language, with 
the natural expectation to accomplish their purpose by 
entering a French or a German family, find, to their 
surprise, that nothing but necessity will induce any 
family to open its sanctities to them. 

It will naturally be said that old or mature communi- 
ties are conservative in this, as in other matters, but we 
do not see that, as America grows older, it mends in this 
respect. Indeed, it is certainly and swiftly growing 
worse. The greed for personalities — the taste for every- 
thing relating to the life of individuals — and the base de- 
sire to be talked about, were never more prevalent than 
now. We have only to take up a fashionable paper to 
learn who has had parties, who attended the parties, 
who were the belles of the parties, and how they were 
dressed, and we know while we read that the ladies 
who gave the parties gave also the information concern- 
ing them, and were glad to see the reports in print. 
Weddings, which should be sacred to kindred and closest 
friends, are turned into public shows, and trousseaus are 



352 Every -Day Topics. 

inventoried by the daily prints and spread before the 
country. It is not enough that one's marriage be pub- 
lished when it takes place, but the engagement must be 
bruited in Jenkins's Journal, Jenkins having previously 
been assured that the announcement would not be of- 
fensive, and subsequently repaid by an order for extra 
papers. The inanities of the Court Journal, over which 
Americans were in the habit of laughing a dozen years 
ago, are more than matched by the daily report of the 
movements of every man of title, or place, or notoriety. 
When a woman lectures, the reporters understand that 
the first thing people wish to learn about her relates to 
her face, figure, and dress, and that is the first thing 
they write about. The women of the platform — being all 
very sensible women, and too wise to be vain — are of 
course offended by this treatment, but it somehow hap- 
pens that the reports are generally of a flattering char- 
acter. 

It would be possible to get along with all this. A man 
may become used to smothering his sense of humiliation 
and disgust when reading the public record of private 
life, so long as that re'cord is made with the consent, or 
at the wish, of those to whom it relates ; but it happens 
that we have in America now a prowling, prying, far- 
seeing, vivacious, loquacious, voracious being known as 
the Local Editor, who must get a living, and who lives 
only upon items. If a man sneeze twice in his presence, 
the local column of the morning paper will contain the 
anouncement that " our esteemed fellow-citizen" is suf- 
fering from a severe cold. If a man lose his hat in a 
high wind, it excites the mirth of the local editor to the 
extent of a dozen lines. He amplifies an accident that 
kills, or a scandal that ruins, with marvellous minuteness 
of detail. His eye is at every man's back door, to see 
and report who and what go and come. There is noth- 



American Life and Manners. 353 

ing safe from his pen. All the private affairs of the 
community for which he writes are published to that 
community every day. If a man shoots a dog, or 
catches a string of trout, or rides out for his health, or is 
seen mysteriously leaving town on an evening train, or 
sells a horse, or buys a cow, or gives a dinner-party, or 
looks sallow, or grows fat, or smiles upon a widow, or 
renews the wall-paper of his house, he gives the local 
editor an item. The local editor turns the houses of the 
community inside out every day, and keeps the windows 
open by which the secrets and sanctities of every home 
are exposed to public view. 

The local editor is, we regret to say, not without ex- 
cuse. Occasionally some indignant victim of his prying 
and publishing propensities scourges or scolds him, but 
it must be confessed, with sorrow and shame, that his 
local column finds a greedy market. Instead of frown- 
ing upon the liberty he takes with persons and homes 
and the details of individual private life, the multitude 
read his column first of all. That its results are mis- 
chievous and demoralizing in their ministry to neighbor- 
hood gossip and scandal, there is no doubt. Among its 
worst results is the destruction of all reverence for the 
right of every private man to live privately, and of every 
home to live with its windows closed. There is unques- 
tionably a desire in a certain sort of private life to get 
into the papers — a desire to spread all the details of its 
doings before the world. This life may be " high " or 
low, fashionable or unfashionable , but it is irredeemably 
vulgar, and can only disgust every self-respectful and 
dignified man and woman. Let us protest on behalf of 
decency against the familiar treatment which the retiring 
and the unwilling receive in the local column, and in the 
more ambitious performances of the omnipresent Jen- 
kins. Let us at least have the privilege of repeating the 



3 54 Every -Day Topics. 

cry of Betsy Trotwood, when her little patch of green 
was invaded, " Janet ! donkeys ! " 



American Incivility. 

There is, undoubtedly, something in the political 
equality established by American institutions which in- 
terferes with the development of civility among those 
who occupy what are denominated the lower walks of 
life. It is hard to see why this should be so. One 
would naturally suppose that political equality would 
breed reciprocal respect among all classes and indi- 
viduals, no less than self-respect. Certainly there could 
hardly be a better basis of good manners than self- 
respect and respect for others, yet, with everything in 
our institutions to develop these, together with a respect 
for woman which is entertained in no other country with 
which we are acquainted, it is not to be denied that 
among the workers of the nation politeness is little 
known and less practised. A man who steps into 
Washington Market with a good coat on, looking for 
his dinner, will receive the utmost politeness of* which 
the stall-keeper is capable, and this will consist in call- 
ing him "boss" — a boorish concession to civility for 
the sake of trade. The courteous greeting, the " Sir," 
and the " Madam," the civil answer, the thousand in- 
describable deferences and attentions, equally without 
servility or arrogance, which reveal good manners, are 
wanting. 

It all comes, we suppose, of the fear of those who find 
themselves engaged in humble employments, that they 
shall virtually concede that somebody somewhere is bet- 
ter than themselves. It is singular that they should 
voluntarily take a course that proves the fact that they 
are so unwilling to admit to themselves and others. The 



American Life and Manners. 355 

man who undertakes to prove that he is as good as a 
gentleman by behaving like a boor, volunteers a deci- 
sion against himself, while he who treats all men politely 
builds for himself a position which secures the respect 
of all whose conduct is not condemned by his own. 
The American is a kinder man than the Frenchman, 
and better-natured than the Englishman, but the hum> 
ble American is less polite than either. One of the 
charms of Paris to the travelling American grows out of 
the fact that it is one of the first places he visits, and 
that then, for the first time in his life, he comes into con- 
tact with a class of humble people who have thoroughly 
good manners. He is not called "boss," or " hoss." 
He is himself put upon his good behavior by the thor- 
oughly courteous treatment he receives among railway 
officials, shop-keepers, waiters at cafe and hotel, cab- 
drivers, etc. The "Bien! Monsieur," and " Bien ! 
Madame," which responds to one's requests in Paris, is 
certainly very sweet and satisfactory after " All right, 
boss ; you can bet on't." 

Where the cure for our national trouble is coming 
from, it is hard to tell. There was a time, fifty years 
ago, when there was a degree of reverence in American 
children, and at least a show of good manners. Great 
respect to those of superior age and culture was then in- 
culcated, and at least formal courtesy exacted. Cer- 
tainly much of this training is done with. Even the men 
and women — fathers, mothers, and teachers — of fifty 
years ago, had receded from the courteous habits of 
previous generations. In the old colonial and even 
later days, great respect was paid to dignities. The 
clergyman was reverenced because he was a clergyman, 
and occupied the supreme position of teacher of the 
people. He was reverenced not only because of his 
holy calling, but because he was a scholar. All this 



356 Every -Day Topics. 

has gone by. The clergyman, if he is a good fel- 
low, is very much liked and petted, but the old rever- 
ence for him, and universal courtesy toward him, are 
unknown. 

Are the people any better for all this change ? We 
think not, and we do not doubt that the change itself 
has much to do with the habits of incivility of which we 
complain. Men must have some principle of reverence 
in them, as'a basis of good manners, and this principle 
of reverence in the modern American child has very 
little development. He comes forward early, and the 
first thing he does in multitudes of instances is to lose 
his respect for his parents. Poor men and women try 
to give their children better chances than they had 
themselves, and the children grow up with contempt for 
those whose sacrifices have raised them to a higher plane 
of culture. They call the teacher " Old Snooks," or 
" Old Bumble," or whatever his name may happen to be. 
It is not unjust to declare that there is in America to- 
day no attempt, distinctly and definitely made, to culti- 
vate a spirit of reverence in children. 

We acknowledge that we have no faith in any attempt 
to reform the manners of the adult population of the 
country. Our efforts to make sober men out of drunk- 
ards, and total-abstinence men out of moderate drink- 
ers, are failures. Our temperance armies are to be made 
entirely out of children. We can raise more Christians 
by juvenile Christian culture than by adult conversion, 
a thousand to one. So it will be in this matter of 
national politeness. The parents and teachers of the 
country can give us a polite people, and this by the cul- 
tivation of the principle of reverence not only, but by 
instruction in all the forms of polite address. With a 
number of things greatly needed to-day in home culture 
and school study, this matter of training in good -manners 



Amertcafi Life and Manners. 357 

is not the least. Indeed, we are inclined to think it is of 
paramount importance. It should become a matter of 
text-books at once. A thorough gentleman or lady, who 
has brains enough to comprehend principles, while pro- 
ficient in practice, could hardly do abetter service to the 
country than by preparing a book for parents and teach- 
ers, as at once a guide to them and to those who are 
under them. Children must be trained to politeness, or 
they will never be polite. They must drink politeness in 
with their mother's milk ; it must be exacted in the fam- 
ily and neighborhood relations ; and boys and girls must 
grow up gentlemen and ladies in their deportment, or 
our nation can never be a thoroughly polite one — polite 
in soul as well as in ceremony, and kind in manner as 
well as kind in heart. 

Where are the Young Men? 

There are curious facts, noticeable in the Eastern 
States, to which occasional allusion is made in conver- 
sation and the newspapers — facts which illustrate the 
scarcity of young men of a certain class. At every 
fashionable summer resort, the small number of young 
men and the comparative plentifulness of young women 
are matters of notoriety. If there should happen to be, 
in such a gathering as this, half a dozen young men, of 
unexceptionable position, to six times the number of 
young women in a corresponding position, the thirty-six 
women would account themselves peculiarly fortunate. 
In a hotel "hop," one will see half the girls with part- 
ners of their own sex. The ladies of a travelling party 
in Europe are, as a rule, in an overwhelming majority. 
The fact that beaux are scarce in all public places is 
one with which the young women of the Eastern States 
are painfully familiar. There are many good reasons to 



358 Every- Day Topics. 

be offered for this disproportion of the sexes in such 
places — the pressure of work or of study upon the men, 
at a period of life when their time is not wholly at their 
disposal, being the principal one. 

If it were only in the resorts for summer recreation 
that young men are scarce, the fact would not be note- 
worthy particularly. They ought to have something to 
do, and enough to do to keep them from spending a great 
deal of time in the pursuit of pleasure. It is a startling 
fact, however, that the young men of the first class, or 
those regarded as belonging to the first class, are as 
scarce in the towns as they are at the summer hotels. 
The marriageable girls among Eastern families of the 
best position are in overwhelmingly larger numbers than 
are the marriageable young men in the same position. 
Something of this is due to the ravages made by the late 
war among the ranks of the young men. Something 
more is due to the emigration westward of great numbers 
of them, so that, in some of the Western States, the men 
outnumber the women. Whatever the causes may be, 
they are sufficient to establish a marked inequality in 
the number of the sexes in the class to which wo allude. 
There are many social circles, in every Eastern city and 
considerable town, embracing great numbers of beauti- 
ful and well-educated young women, in which there can- 
not be found a brilliant or even a particularly desirable 
match among the men. Two or three hackneyed beaux, 
whose hair remains, black by reason of the barber, and 
whose teeth are sound by reason of the dentist, do the 
polite for two or three generations of beauties, and are 
so busy in the service that they forget to marry, and so 
pass away ; while shrinking into a thriftless maidenhood, 
with hearts unwon and charms unappropriated, the sweet 
life of the women dries up, and sinks to the dust from 
which it rose. 



American Life ci7id Maimers. 359 

Now, to us this is one of the most sad and serious 
things connected with our social condition, and it has a 
world to do with the uneasiness of women, manifested in 
various ways — the universal seeking for something with 
which to fill up life and make it significant. 

But we have a practical reason for calling attention to 
this matter, and this we propose to present in a state- 
ment relating to a large number of young men usually 
assigned to the second class in society. While our fine 
girls are bemoaning the lack of young men, and the 
scarcity of beaux who are marriageable and who mean 
marriage, there is a class of young men whom they do 
not recognize at all, yet who will furnish to the next gen- 
eration its men of enterprise, of power, of position, and 
of wealth. It is not the sons of the rich who will, as a 
rule, remain rich. The sons of the poor will get rich ; 
and there are to-day, drudging in offices, and counting- 
rooms, and storehouses, and machine-shops, and print- 
ing establishments, the men who, in twenty-five years, 
will control the nation socially, politically, and finan- 
cially. Every man of them means to be married ; they 
will, as a rule, make excellent husbands ; they are all at 
work trying to win success. They are men who would 
be easily improved by recognition, and by bringing 
them into good, intelligent society, yet they are as little 
noticed as if they were so many dogs. Virtuous young 
men from the country go into the city, and live for years 
without any society, and are regarded by the fashionable 
young women with indifference or contempt ; but those 
young men have a hold upon the future, and when their 
success is won, in whatever field of enterprise it may 
be, the fashionable will be glad to claim them as be- 
longing to their own number. We regret to say that, as 
a rule, the young men for whom a position has been won 
by virtuous and enterprising fathers amount to but little 



360 Every-Day Topics. 

in the world ; and we rejoice to say that companions 
chosen from those who have their fortunes to make and 
their position to win, are those to whom a well-bred 
woman can generally with safety intrust her happiness 
and herself. 

If there is anything in all these facts, thus brought 
into association, which points out a duty to " our best 
society," and urges its performance, even by selfish 
motives, it will be readily perceived. The hope of the 
country is in this second grade of young men. They 
ought to have better social privileges. What better 
capital can a man have than youth, virtue, intelligence, 
health, and enterprise ? What better claim than these 
can any man present for admission into good society ? 
To young men of this class, now almost wholly neglect- 
ed, the society of educated and accomplished women 
would be a rare and fruitful privilege — fruitful to them- 
selves, and quite a*s fruitful to those whose courtesies 
they receive. 

The American Restaurant. 

The typical American restaurant is an establishment 
quite as well individualized, and quite as characteristic, 
as anything of the kind to be found in the world. The 
French cafe, the German beer-garden, and the English 
chop-house, all have their characteristic habits, appear- 
ance, and manners, but the American restaurant is like 
neither of them. It can only be conducted by an Amer- 
ican, and, we regret to say, it can only be frequented 
and enjoyed by Americans of the second and lower 
grades. The aim of the conductor seems to be to sell 
the greatest amount of food in the shortest possible time 
— an aim which the guests invariably second by eating 
as rapidly as possible. We have seen, in a Broadway 



American Life and Manners. 361 

restaurant, a table surrounded by men, all eating their 
dinners with their hats on, while genuine ladies, ele- 
gantly dressed, occupied the next table, within three 
feet of them. In this restaurant there was as much din 
in the ordering of dishes and the clash of plates and 
knives and forks as if a brass band had been in full 
blast. Every dish was placed before the guests with a 
bang. The noise, the bustle, the hurry, in such a place, 
at dinner-time, can only be compared to that which 
occurs when the animals are fed in Barnum's caravan. 
We do not exaggerate at all when we say that the Amer- 
ican restaurant is the worst-mannered place ever visited 
by decent people. No decent American ever goes into 
one when he can help it, and comparatively few decent 
people know how very indecent it is. 

Our best hotels have no equals in the world, and in 
asserting this we know what we say, and " speak by the 
card." Our best restaurants are mainly kept by foreign- 
ers, or, if not, are modelled upon the French type. No- 
where in the world can there be found better cooking, 
more quiet and leisurely manners, or better service, 
than in the restaurants of the hotels above alluded to, 
or the best class of eating-houses, These, however, are 
direct or indirect importations, while the American 
restaurant, pure and proper, serves the needs of the 
great multitude of business men — clerks, porters, and 
upper-class laborers generally. These do not eat — they 
feed. Thousands of them would regard it .as an affecta- 
tion of gentility to remove their hats while feeding, and 
they sit down, order their dinner, which — pudding, pas- 
try, vegetables, and meat — is all placed before them in 
one batch, and then " pitch in." The lack of courtesy, 
of dignity, of ordinary tokens even of self-respect, would 
be amusing if it were not so humiliating. 

It is useless for the incredulous American to ask the 
Vol. I.— 16 



362 Every-Day Topics. 

question, " Where have you been ?" When in a second- 
rate restaurant a guest asks for fish-balls and hears his 
order repeated to the cook by the colored waiter as 
"Sleeve-buttons for one!" and hears his neighbor's 
order for pork and beans transformed into "Stars and 
stripes," he begins to wonder, indeed, whether " civili- 
zation" is not "a failure," and whether " the Caucasian" 
is not "played out." The average American, in the 
average American restaurant, eats his dinner in the 
average time of six minutes and forty-five seconds. He 
bolts into the door, bolts his dinner, and then bolts out. 
There is no thought of those around him, no courtesy to 
a neighbor, no pleasant word or motion of politeness to 
the man or the woman who receives his money — nothing 
but a fearful taking in of ammunition — the feeding of a 
devouring furnace — and then a desperate dash into the 
open air, as if he were conscious he had swallowed poi- 
son, and must find a doctor and a stomach-pump, or 
die. A favorite method of devouring oysters is to stand, 
or to sit on a high stool, always with the hat on — oysters 
on the half-shell and the eater under a half-shell. There 
may be something in the position that favors degluti- 
tion : we don't know. 

The penalty a man pays for getting his lunch or his 
dinner at a reasonable price is to encounter the offen- 
sive scenes we have described. The penalty he pays for 
eating where he finds the manners of civilization is an 
unreasonable price. When a man pays half a dollar for 
a bit of cold meat, or seventy-five cents for a steak, or a 
quarter of a dollar for a couple of boiled eggs, he recalls 
sorrowfully and wonderingly — if he has ever travelled 
— the nice little breakfasts he used to get at Madame 
Dijon's in Paris for two francs, his dinners in the Palais 
Royal for three, his daily board, with rooms, at the Pen- 
sion Picardj in Geneva, for five, and his luxurious apart- 



American Life and Manners. 363 

ments with an elaborate table d'hote at all the principal 
hotels of the Continent for ten. Is there any necessity 
for such prices as we are obliged to pay at the best res- 
taurants — or any apology for them ? Any man who 
keeps house, and does his own marketing, knows the 
first cost of the expensive dishes placed before him 
in these restaurants, and he knows there is no just re- 
lation between the cost and the price charged, after 
all allowance has been made for cooking, service, rent, 
etc. 

Some time or other there will be a change, we sup- 
pose. When the times of inflation are gone by, when 
on one side men will content themselves with reason- 
able profits, and, on the other, money comes harder and 
slower, we shall have a reform of prices in the better 
class of eating-houses. Our expectations in regard to 
the second-rate places are more indefinite. It takes 
several generations to train a people to ideas of refine- 
ment and good manners at the table. The average Ger- 
man has nothing to boast of yet in this respect, and we 
can only hope that the American, with his greater sensi- 
tiveness and quicker instincts, will reach the desired 
point before him. 



The Common Schools. 

It seems rather late in our history as a nation to be 
discussing the question whether the State is transcend- 
ing its legitimate functions in educating its children ; 
yet, by the letters which we read in the newspapers, it 
appears that there are people who entertain the question 
in its affirmative phase, and who declare that the duty 
of education attaches only to the parent. In what inter- 
est these men write we do not know — whether in the in- 



364 Every- Day Topics. 

terest of their pockets or their religious party. It is ex- 
ceedingly hard to give them credit for either intelligence 
or candor. The lessons of history are so plain, the re- 
sults of universal education have been so beneficent, the 
ignorance that dwells everywhere where education has 
been left to the parent and the Church is so patent and 
so lamentable in every aspect and result, that it seems 
as if no man could rationally and candidly come to a 
conclusion adverse to the American policy in this mat- 
ter. The simple fact that we are obliged to pass laws to 
keep young children out of factories and bring them to 
the free schools, shows how utterly indifferent multitudes 
of parents are concerning the education of their children, 
and how soon the American nation would sink back into 
the popular apathy and ignorance which characterize 
some of the older peoples of the world. 

A State is a great, vital organization, endowed by the 
popular mind with a reason for being, and by the popu- 
lar will with a policy for self-preservation. This policy 
takes in a great variety of details. It protects commerce 
by the establishment of light-houses, the deepening of 
channels, the establishment of storm-signals, etc. It 
ministers in many ways to the development of the coun- 
try's internal resources. It fosters agriculture. It is 
careful of all its prosperities and sources of prosperity. 
It establishes a currency. It organizes and superintends 
an elaborate postal service. It carries on all the pro- 
cesses of a grand organic life. Our own nation governs 
itself, and one of the conditions of all good government 
is intelligence at the basis of its policy. An ignorant 
people cannot, of course, govern themselves intelligently, 
and the State, endowed with its instinct, or its policy, 
of self-preservation, is, and ought to be, more sensitive 
at this point than at any other. In the minds of the 
people the State has the sources of its life, and to those 



American Life and Manners. 365 

sources, by unerring instinct, our own country has, from 
the first, looked for its perpetuity. 

There is no organization of life, individual and simple, 
or associated and complex, in which the instinct, im- 
pulse, or principle of self-preservation is not the pre- 
dominant one. We fought the war of the Revolution to 
establish our nationality, and the war of the Rebellion 
to maintain it. We have spent, first and last, incalcu- 
lable blood and treasure to establish and keep our na- 
tional life intact, and the national policy with relation to 
public schools is part and parcel of that all-subordinat- 
ing determination to secure the perpetuity of the State. 
Men make better citizens for being educated. The 
higher the popular intellect is raised, the more intelli- 
gent and independent will be its vote. The stronger 
the sources of government, the stronger the government. 
If the " bayonets that think" are the most potent, the 
ballots that think are the most beneficent. 

The question, then, which has been raised, touching 
the duty of the State in the matter of popular education, 
is a question which concerns the life and perpetuity of 
the State, and is a question, not for a church, not for a 
parent, or for any subordinate combination of parents, 
to decide. It is a question for the State to decide — not, 
of course, from any humanitarian point of view, but 
from its own point of view. To put the question into 
form, that question would read something like this : 
" Can I, the American State, afford to intrust to heed- 
less or mercenary parents, or to any church organization, 
which either makes or does not make me subordinate to 
itself, the education of the children of the nation, when 
my own existence and best prosperity depend upon the 
universality and liberality of that education ? " There 
are many other vital questions which the State might ask 
in this connection — for patriotism, as a sentiment, grows 



366 Every -Day Topics. 

with the beneficence of the institutions under which it 
lives. Every victory which our nation has ever won has 
been a victory of the common school. This has been 
the nursery, not only of our patriots, but of our sol- 
diers. In the Franco-Prussian war, the universally edu- 
cated crossed swords with the partially educated, and 
the latter went to the wall. 

This matter of leaving education to parents and to 
churches is, to use the familiar but expressive slang of 
the street, " played out." If the advocates of this pol- 
icy could point to a single well-educated nation on the 
face of the globe, whose popular intelligence is the re- 
sult of that policy, they might have some claim to be 
heard ; but no such nation exists. Where priests and 
parents have had it all their own way for generations 
and centuries, there is to be found the greatest degree 
of popular ignorance, and the men whose votes most 
seriously menace the health and permanence of Ameri- 
can institutions and American life are the very men we 
have imported from those regions. They are the men 
whom designing demagogues can buy and bribe, and 
lead whithersoever they will — men who cannot read the 
ballots they deposit, and are as ignorant of politics as 
the horses they drive or the pigs they feed. 

We have not taken up this subject because we con- 
sider the common schools in 4 danger. They are not in 
danger. The State will never relinquish its policy in 
this matter. The common school, as an American in- 
stitution, will live while America lives. Not only this, 
but the signs are unmistakable that it is to be more far- 
reaching in its efforts and results than it ever has been. 
Popular education is one of the primary functions of the 
State's life. No democratic government can long exist 
without it, and our best people are thoroughly confirmed 
in this conviction. We have taken up the subject sim- 



American Life and Manners. 367 

ply to show that the State cannot, "go back on" its 
record without the surrender of the policy which grows 
out of the instinct of all living organizations for self- 
protection and self-preservation. To surrender this 
policy would be not only foolish, but criminal ; and 
there is not one American institution that American 
people would sooner fight for and die for, than that 
which secures an educated and intelligent nationality. 



THE END. 



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